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sentence structures. Students were given the essay question during class. If they were
unable to complete it, they were allowed to take it home, just like the pre-test, to avoid
discrepancies in data.
The analysis of the students’ scripts went through the same process as the pre-test stage.
The essays were marked according to SPM rubrics, the errors were examined,
categorised, and prioritized. The results for the post test is as displayed in Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Total Marks for the Post-Test
Total Marks for the Post-Test
40 32
34
35
MARKS OF THE PRE-TEST
Student A
Student B
Student C
Student D
Student E
Student F
Student G
Students H
Student I
Student J
Student K
Student L
Student M
Student N
Student O
Student P
Student Q
30 19 26 19 25 26 24 22 20 27 25 26 23 26 24 24
25
20
15
10
5
0
5 JAYA STUDENTS
The next step taken was to compare the students’ scores (pre-test and post-test). When comparing
the pre-test and post-test results, the marks of two students decreased, one remained the
same while the rest increased. During the interventions, the students still made numerous
errors while doing the given worksheets pertaining to the gaps in knowledge identified.
However, after the interventions, based on the post-test, although the occurrence of these
errors still persisted, their frequency had experienced a marked decrease. In addition to this,
although they all still wrote short texts, the number of words of each student’s essay still
increased, indicating an improvement in the students’ ability to expand upon their ideas.
More students also varied their sentence structures in the post-test compared to the pre-
test. As exhibited in Figure 2, there was a significant change of marks for all 17 students who were
involved in this planning.
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Figure 2.
Marks between Pre-test and Post-Test
40
35 34 32
32
30 26 2425 26 2627 2425 26 26 28
25 24 24 23 23 24 2424
20 24 2223
21 21 22
19 19
Marks 20 20 20
16 16
15 Pre-test
Post-test
10
5
0 Student A
Student B
Student C
Student D
Student E
Student F
Student G
Students H
Student I
Student J
Student K
Student L
Student M
Student N
Student O
Student P
Student Q
5 JAYA STUDENTS
REFLECTIONS
Upon reflection, the interventions could be improved by involving more games and visual
aids to keep the students engaged. When instructing students on how to improve in certain
aspects, specifically writing, it would be better to use their own essays as samples, so that
they have a clearer frame of reference regarding where they went wrong and what they can
do to improve. Overall, the students were more active during lessons, indicating that
interventions like this help to pique their interest in the subject, facilitating effective learning.
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Appendix A
Appendices:
Intervention Activities
Essay Question: Describe an enjoyable weekend you have experienced.
Instructions: Correct the verb tense errors in the sample essay.
One weekend during last year’s year-end holidays, three cousins of mine from Australia visits my family. They
are here from Friday to Sunday. Born and breeds in the land of the kangaroo, they have never been to Malaysia.
We having a great time with them and take them sightseeing around Kuala Lumpur.
On Friday morning, after their arrival, they resting at our home as they are a bit tired after the long flight. We
also had a lot of catch up to do as we have not seen them for quite a few years. When they had recovers from
their jet lag around noon, we take them out for lunch. After a 30-minute drive, we arrives in Kajang, the city
renown for its ambrosial satay. My cousins remarking that the satay, which is rare down under, looked
appetising and tastes scrumptious. They also finds it palatable when taking with the peanut sauce. They do not
find it surprising to learning that the savoury food is one of the national dishes of Malaysians. After lunch, we
returns to Kuala Lumpur and taking them to a few tourist attractions such as the KL Tower and the Petronas
Twin Tower, among some other skyscrapers. They are excited to saw the breathtaking views of the city. After
the tall-building tour, we had dinner at a Nyonya restaurant. It was a long and tired day. They had really
enjoying themselves and looks forward to more fun.
The next day, all of us wake up early and had the standard Malaysian breakfast - nasi lemak. It is a little spicy
for them. Nevertheless, they enjoying the food and are happy about the new experience. After take the most
important meal of the day, we takes them to places of interest like the National Museum and the National
Monument. We also visit the Kuala Lumpur Bird Park, which was the largest free-flight walk-in aviary in the
world. They had lots of fun learns about the different varieties of bird species as well as new things about
Malaysia.
On the last day, they were treat to an Indian breakfast, which consists of dosai and chutney. They loving the
food very much and keep asking for more. They takes so much that they were too full for lunch. So we go to
shopping centres - the Pavilion and the Berjaya Time Square, where they buying some souvenirs for their
relatives and friends. For dinner, we bring them to Chinatown, where they savour some of the famous and
delicious dishes of the Chinese cuisine, like bak kut teh, wonton noodles and claypot chicken rice. After having
the delicacies which they had enjoying thoroughly, we takes them for a walk at the nearby night market. We buy
some dried barbecue pork for them to brought home at the market.
The aeroplane they were catch was scheduling to depart at 10.30 that night. All of us arrive at the airport with
heavy hearts. We wishing they could stay longer. Before they entering the departure lounge, we hug and bade
them farewell. They thanks us for taking them around Kuala Lumpur and also for our kind hospitality towards
them.
This is one of the most enjoyable weekend that I has ever experienced. Through the experience, I learn that the
best time is spending with family. As the saying goes, ‘blood is thicker than water’. As such, I is thankful for
my family members, whom I love and treasured. Hopefully, I am able to spending more time with them so as to
further strengthened family ties.
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Appendix B
Intervention Week 2: Spelling - Homophones
Activity 1:
Homophones:
Words which have the same pronunciation, but different spelling and different meanings.
Ex. 1 Directions: Underline the correct word.
Example: Please try not to (waste, waist) paper.
1. Can I go to the party (to, too, two)?
2. This is my favourite (pare, pair, pear) of jeans.
3. I (sent, scent, cent) a letter to my aunt in Vietnam.
4. The children got (bored, board) during the lecture.
5. Mr. and Mrs. Rodriguez like to work in (there, they’re, their) garden.
6. Alec is going to (wear, ware) his work boots today.
7. Do you think it is going to (rein, rain, reign) this afternoon?
8. I saw a restaurant just off the (rode, road) about a mile back.
9. David’s brother is in a (band, banned) which plays Russian music.
10. Juana wants her socks because her (tows, toes) are cold.
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Activity 3:
Homophone Game: Instructions: Each picture depicts a homophone. Match each homophone to
its partner and write their names below their respective pictures.
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Appendix C
Activity 3:
ADJECTIVE GAME: Instructions: Fill in the tables provided with 3 root adjectives (eg. tall)
as well as their comparative adjectives (eg. taller) and superlative adjectives (eg. tallest) that
best describe the objects shown. Then, write sentences using each adjective.
OBJECT 1: CAR
ROOT ADJECTIVE COMPARATIVE SUPERLATIVE
ADJECTIVE ADJECTIVE
1.
2.
3.
SENTENCES:
1. (a)
(b)
(c)
2. (a)
(b)
(c)
3. (a)
(b)
(c)
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Appendix D
Intervention Week 4: Connectors and Linkers
Activity 2:
Situation: Getting Ready for School
Sample paragraph
To start off, I usually take a nice warm shower before getting dressed. Then, I raced
downstairs to eat a delicious bowl of cereal while I watched some morning TV shows.
After that, I walk to the bus stop nearby to wait for the school bus to arrive. However, if
it’s raining, I make sure to bring an umbrella.
Ex. 1 - Situation: Cooking my favourite food.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………
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PEER CHECKING
STRATEGY: A CASE
STUDY
WONG SOON LING
BETTY D PRIMUS
THE SETTING
S.M.K Saint Paul is one of the top five schools in the town of Beaufort which takes about
half an hour drive from the state capital Kota Kinabalu. It is categorized as a rural school
and is the oldest secondary school in Beaufort. To date, it has 522 students with 18 classes
and 38 teachers including 4 English teachers. 10 years back this school was packed with
more than 700 students.
The most common problems of my students are Subject – Verb Agreement, the use of
Adjective and Adverb, sentence structures, the use of connectors and inability in ideas
expansion. When writing in English, they are also influenced by their mother tongue, for
example the use of honorifics such as "Sir" or "Tuan," which are commonly used when
writing a formal letter in Bahasa Melayu. "Instead of using the pronoun 'you', they used ‘Sir’.
My intervention plan is designed to focus on directed writing, which I hoped would improve
students’ skills and knowledge in writing a good essay for SPM examination.
I have been teaching English for 20 years in S.M.K Saint Paul since I was posted to this
school in July 2000. It is my first school since my first posting until now. I have been teaching
form 4 and form 5 since 2001. As an Excellent Teacher I had shared my knowledge with
other schools in the district for 6 years.
The students involved in the plan are from form 5 Bestari (5B) with 27 mixed ability students.
They come from different ethnicity and background. They consist of Kadazan-Dusun,
Bisaya, Brunei, Murut, Kedayan, Chinese, Malay, Indian, Bugis and Filipino. Their parents
are government servants, blue collar workers, drivers, cleaners, businessmen, farmers and
self-employed. However, they have no problem communicating with each other regardless
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of their race and family background. They always help each other and take part actively in
everyday lesson.
Based on their form 4 final examination results, the marks scored are between 42 and 75
(grade E to A-). Most students’ grade is between B and C. Some can converse in English
fluently while others, usually converse with some Malay words added in. However, they have
no problem to understand lesson in English. The problem with my students is that they have
a lack of vocabulary which caused them unable to expand sentence or use the exact term
to explain a situation. They also have a problem with Subject – Verb Agreement. In this case
they are confused with singular and plural verb and noun in the Present Tense. They have
difficulties in adding ‘s’ to singular verb and ‘s’ to a plural noun. Another gap identified is my
students have problems with Adjective and Adverb as they are confused with the term and
use as some words are used for both Adjective and Adverb. My students also have problem
to expand ideas due to limited grasp of vocabulary and inability to form different types of
sentences. They tend to write a long sentence, but with incorrect sentence structures.
INVESTIGATION
Level 1
The pre-test was conducted during the Movement Control Order (MCO) due to the Covid-
19 pandemic on 22 April 2020. Only 15 out of 27 students responded online and posted the
task done online. When the school re-opened on 24 June, they submitted the essay done.
The students were asked to write a letter of complaint with the notes provided as the
standard SPM question for Directed Writing. The skills required for the students to complete
the tasks were: Tenses (present tense), Subject – Verb Agreement, Adjectives or Adverbs,
Sentence Structures, Connectors, and ideas expansion.
Findings from the pre-test
Based on the pre-test data, they are four types of gaps with a high frequency of errors.
However, I am still in doubt if these data could really help me to plan my intervention as only
15 out of 27 students were involved in the test. This is due to the pre-test was carried out as
an online task which was done by students at home during the Movement Control Order
(MCO). Since it was an online and do at home task, not many students responded online.
The completed task was submitted after the school re-opens on 24 June 2020. However, I
have no other choice but to trust the data collected and to continue with my intervention
plan.
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From these gaps, I ranked them according to frequency and importance for the purpose of
prioritizing of errors in paragraph. Hence, I selected the tenses, Adjectives, Adverbs,
Sentence Structures, Vocabulary, Connectors, and notes expansion. After the second
observation throughout the scripts, I chose to focus on the Simple Present tense with the
focus on Subject – Verb Agreement, Adjectives, Sentence Structures, Connectors, and
notes expansion. Two of the most important issues are Subject – Verb Agreement and
Sentence Structures which I think are important for students to expand notes in Directed
Writing. I also think that notes expansion could help students to gain more marks if students
could use different types of sentence structures and the correct form of subject – verb
agreement. Therefore, I crossed my fingers and to carry on with my intervention plan which
would focus on the gaps discussed above.
I marked the test according to SPM marking scheme. The marks were awarded based on
the format (3 marks), content points (12 marks) and language (20 marks). The full mark
awarded is 35 which were converted into percentages (100%).
Level 2
The Intervention Plan
The process of identifying, categorising and prioritizing the errors had led to another process
which I had been thinking: what should I do to treat the problems identified? Later, a four-
week intervention plan was laid out for me to deal with the gaps identified from the pre-test.
This planning as presented in Table 1.
Table 1.
The Planning for the 4- week Intervention
WEEK GAPS IDENTIFIED INTERVENTION ACTIVITIES
Week 1 Adjective and
Week 2 Adverb v Table of words and explanation
Week 3 Subject – Verb v Sentence forming activity
Agreement v Error identification worksheet
Week 4 v A Table of Simple Present Tense
Sentence Structures v A song lyric
v Error identification worksheet
Connectors v A Table of Simple Present Tense
v Two shorts paragraph with
difference type of sentences
v Error identification worksheet
v A Table of connectors
v Identifying types of connectors
handout
v Power point slide
v Idea expansion worksheet
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Intervention Through Peer Checking Activity
I used a peer checking in most of the activities involving grammar teaching, as most students have
problems in understanding the grammar rules. What I did was to explain each topic using a table or
slide show, sometimes a video show. Then I would hand out worksheet for students to do a certain
task. For example, to identify adjective or adverb in a sentence. After the students completed the
task, they would come out in front of the class and write the complete sentences on the whiteboard.
Other students would be checking the sentence, if they thought they were incorrect, they may come
out and correct the answer. They also needed to explain why the answers were wrong.
To teach subject – verb agreement, I asked students to rewrite sentences by using the correct form
of subject -verb agreement. This task was taken from students’ essay which I retyped. After they
rewrote the sentences, students exchanged their answers with a partner. Each of them checked the
other’s answers and gave opinions. Later, some of the students came out and wrote the answer on
the whiteboard. Other students took turns to check and correct the sentences.
I also used peer checking for letter writing activity. Students were encouraged to check with each
other whether they used the correct format for formal letter, checked for the organisation of the of
the content, the salutation and title and word choice. In addition, the students were also asked to
give opinions on the sentence structures. If the students thought that the opinion given by their peer
was acceptable, they may choose to rewrite the essay or just not before they submitted the essay.
At the end of the lesson, the teacher gave comments, provided, and discussed the answers after the
peer checking activity.
I found out peer checking activities boost students’ confidence in giving feedback and opinions. This
activity was fun, as students try to out-do each other by showing their knowledge and skills. In other
words, it boosted my students’ confidence to do better and learn grammar a fun way. It also helped
them to improve their own work by assessing other students’ work. I could see that shy students
began to show confidence in giving opinions to their peers’ works as well.
THE RESPONSE
THE POST-TEST
To gauge the interventions had given impact on my students’ progress, a post-test was carried out
after the 4th week. The question was parallel with the pre-test question which required to students to
write a letter of complaint using the points provided. Generally, the objectives of the post test were
to test the students’ performance after the intervention, identify the weaknesses on writing a formal
letter, and also to identify the skills in using SVA, adverbs or adjectives, sentence structures,
connectors as well as ideas expansion.
The post-test was conducted on 29 July 2020. It was a letter of complaint which was similar to the
pre-test. This is important as it would show the progress of the students after the intervention plan
was carried out. There were 25 out of 27 students sat for the post-test. Two students did not take
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both pre-test and post-test. In the pre-test there were only 15 students who took the test. It was
conducted online during the MCO period on 22 April 2020, so not many students were able to do the
test. This is because some students were having internet problems, and some did not respond to
any lesson during MCO.
The pre-test result shows 1 student got A, 4 got A-, 1 B+, 3 B, 5 c+ and 1 C. While the post-test
result shows 1 student got A, 5 A-, 4 B, 6 B-,1 C+, 6 C, 1 D and 1 E. It shows a slight increment in
percentage or grade with 2 students scored lower marks in the post-test than the pre-test. These
students claimed that they were too nervous during the test, so they made some mistake which cost
them some marks.
Through students marked scripts, I noticed that some students did well on the pre-test because it
was done at home where they could refer to sample answers to such question. When the post-test
was conducted in the classroom, they could not refer to any reference book and had to rely on
themselves. This was hard for those students who did not take the pre-test or absent during the
lessons when the intervention plan was carried out.
REFLECTIONS
I could see some students did perform well in the post-test and they admitted it was because
of the lesson after the pre-test (intervention plan). They said they could understand more
about the subject – verb agreement and were glad that they have learned how to expand
notes and form different types of sentences. However, they are some who are still struggling
and have difficulties to write a letter of complaint. Some students used informal language
which is used in an informal letter. An example of the sentence: “How are you, Sir?”. Some
even apologised to the recipient for writing the letter of complaint. So, I decided to focus on
the vocabulary and language in my future lessons. Hopefully, my students would be able to
write a letter of complaint in a formal tone.
Another gap is my students were influenced by their mother tongue when writing an essay.
They would do a literal translation from their mother tongue which affects the marks of
language. Some students literally translated from Bahasa Melayu ways of writing a formal
letter. Some examples such as: “I hope Sir site will take action on this matter”, “I hope this
problem will not become bigger”. My students also have difficulties to use punctuation. They
tend to write a long sentence without punctuation, which could distort the meaning of a
sentence. I would certainly do more practice with my students and try to come out with more
intervention plan in the future.
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MARKS
Figure 2:
Percentage of Marks for the Pre-Test and Post-Test
Percentage of Marks for Pre-Test and Post-
Test
100
80
60
40
20 Pre-Test
0 Post-Test
5B STUDENTS
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THE INTERVENTION
ON WRITING ABOUT
THE
ENVIRONMENTAL
ISSUE
HII YEW CHUO
JAMALI MOHAMAD
SETTING
SMK Kai Chung is a Conforming School with a total of 967 students with 32 classes. As for
Form 1 to Form 5, we have 6 classes for each form. We also have a Remove class. We
have a total of 64 teachers including our principal. It is a one session school with the
demography students of 52% Chinese, 26% Malays, 17% Ibans and others 5%. It is situated
in the small town of Bintangor, the District of Meradong and counted as Grade B school
outskirt school.
A total of 32 of the Form 5S1 students took part in this intervention plan with 12 boys and
20 girls. They come from several nearby primary schools with different English learning
background. Most of them came from Chinese feeder schools and some were from
government primary schools. The students involved in this intervention plan are Science
Stream students but with mixed-ability command of English.
In classroom interaction, students are used to speak their own mother tongue language. A
minority number of students tend to use English Language to communicate with teacher
during the English lesson. Due to this, students have difficulties in speaking during the oral
assessment activity. Besides, students are lacking in the command of vocabulary as they
do not practice self-exploration on reading materials and more to the concept of “spoon
feeding” by the teacher in classroom lesson.
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I have been teaching in SMK Kai Chung for about 15 years since 2005. Teaching English
as the Second Language is never to be satisfying without the commitment of the students
to work hard to enhance their mastery of English Language particularly outside the
classroom. As for me I always tell my students to have self-exploration on reading materials
to learn and indulge in using more new and better vocabulary that will assist them during
essay writing. Students pick up their command of language and vocabulary along their
journey of education and there is no overnight improvement.
INVESTIGATION
Level 1
THE WRITING TESTS
The pre-test was a directed writing with the format of writing an article with the topic of
‘Natural Disaster’. As for the post-test, the same format of a directed writing of an article with
the topic ‘The importance of weight management’. Both questions will be interrelated to the
content points of causes and effects of the matter discussed. For additional practice during
the post-test, I added one more test using continuous writing on descriptive essays with the
topics ‘Describe the major stressors in teens’ life” and “Describe the things that bring you
happiness’. This was done after the 4-week intervention plans on the grammatical items
which were specified from the pre-test writing.
The Pre-test
The main objective of the pre-test is to let students to write the causes and effects of a
problem. It is also acts to diagnose students’ use of language items to write a meaningful
essay. Besides, it acquires students to give their own ideas to expand on the content points
of the question. Teacher can see how effective the students can construct sentences to
elaborate on the content points given. The skills required for the students to answer:
i. The use of tenses:
Students need to know the appropriate simple present tense to write on this essay. As
for this, students must have the knowledge and skills on the usage of subject-verb
agreement in elaborating on the content points of this essay. The knowledge of
constructing meaningful sentences is important to create an effective piece of writing
and making less mistakes of grammatical errors.
ii. The general knowledge on the causes and effects:
Students should find out the causes and effects of the natural disasters that would help
in the elaboration of the content points. This is also to add on more own ideas on the
given content points on causes and effects.
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iii. The format of writing an article
Students need to know the layout of an article for directed writing as it is also awarded
marks for its format. The title of the article and the writer’s name are the main elements
that must be included in writing an article.
Based on the pre-test data, the most common to the least errors detected were the subject-
verb agreement, modal verb, word formation and sentence structures. Therefore, the
intervention plans will be focusing on those grammatical errors which are also the basic
grammar skills to be learnt by the students in essay writing.
Figure 1.
Percentage of Marks for the Pre-Test
80 75 75
70
60 55 65 45 55 40 50 40 50 60 50 40 65 60 65
50MARKS OF THE PRE-TEST
Student 155 55 55 55 55 45 40 55 50 40 45 45 40
Student 3
Student 5 40 45 40
Student 7
Student 940
Student 11
30 Student 13
Student 15
20 Student 17
Student 19
Student 2110
Student 23
Student 250
Student 27
Student 29
Student 31
5S1 STUDENTS
From the pre-test data, generally, students were facing problems with the subject-verb
agreement when they are using simple present tense matching the subject (nouns) and the
verbs in sentences. Intervention will be focusing on the modal verbs too as from the finding,
students were also having problems of using the correct form of verbs after the modal verbs.
Intervention will be planned for word formations as was found that students were mistakenly
used the words in context without knowing the forms of the words for noun, verb, adjective
and adverb. Sentence structures including the Simple Sentence, Compound Sentence and
Complex sentence will be included in the intervention plan to expose students about different
types of sentence structures in writing.
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Level 2
THE INTERVENTION ACTIVITIES
As detected from the pre-test, students were having the problem in subject-verb agreement
aspect when they used simple present tense. To cater this gap, an intervention on subject-
verb agreement was carried out to let to see how much actually they know about it. First, to
start the lesson students were given a short diagnostic test with two simple tasks to see if
they could score all the questions correctly. Students cross-checked their answers and the
teacher counted the minimum number of questions that the students could score by head
counting.
Then teacher explained in detail on the rules of matching the subject-verb agreement by
showing the concept of applying the subject-verb agreement. Teacher referred to the
diagnostic test questions which most of the students got the wrong answers. Teacher related
the correct answers to the concept shown and students did their correction. A practice was
given after that for students to correct the errors of the subject-verb agreement by relating
to the concept they had learned.
The main objective of this intervention is to remind students about the basic form of verbs
after the modal verbs as it has become a common grammatical error in students’ essay
writing. It was found that students were able to use the appropriate modal verbs in context
but unable to use the correct form of verbs after the modal verbs. First, using the LCD
projector teacher showed the structure of a modal verb in a sentence and stressed on the
forms of the verbs as below:
Figure 1.
The Display of the Content to the First Intervention
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Then teacher explained on the list of modal verbs with their respective mode such as ability,
possibility, probability, permission, and obligation (refer to appendix B: Week 3). Teacher
went through the notes with the students explaining about the modal verbs with the
examples. After that student were given a worksheet for further practices on the modal
verbs. Students did the practices individually and correction was done in the class.
Next was on the vocabulary activity. First, teacher brainstormed students on the word
‘Power’, to show its different forms for the different meanings (refer to appendix B: Week 2).
Then students were given a paragraph to practise on the word ‘power’ by choosing the
correct word forms from the table showing the different word forms under the heading of
Nouns, Verbs, Adjectives and Adverbs. Teacher went through the meaning of all the words
in the table with the students. Students tried on the practices individually and followed up
with the discussion on the answers.
Next, students were given a list of common word families and each students chose a word
from the list to construct a short paragraph covering the functions of it as noun, verb,
adjective and adverb. In the next lesson, a sharing session with the students using all the
short paragraphs written by the students to see the correct usage of the words in contexts.
Below is an example of a student’s written paragraph:
The enjoyment of travelling is something you cannot express through words. One of my tips
for making travelling more enjoyable is bring your own headphones and listen to the music. If
you ask me, do I enjoy travelling? I would say yes. Travelling is an enjoyably memory that
may only happen once in your life that you can experience it.
enjoyment=noun, enjoyable=adjective, enjoy=verb, enjoyably=adverb
Teacher went through all the students’ written short paragraph by showing it with LCD
projector and students gave feedback for any mistakes of word forms used in context of their
peers and corrections were done at the same time. As for follow up activities, students were
given more practices to form words in the task sheets by filling in the blanks (refer to
appendix B: Worksheet 2,3 & 4).
The Sentence Structure Activities
On the day before this lesson to be conducted on sentence structures, students were given
the full notes on the three different types of sentence structures for their self-access learning
for understanding at home. Students were given the trust to read before coming to the
lesson. The first activity before starting the lesson, teacher brainstormed on the students to
talk on the different sentences based on their self-access learning. Teacher showed the
notes on the slides and voluntary students were chosen to explain on the structures of the
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different sentences. Their peers added on any missed-out points regarding the types of
sentence structures.
Then students did a practice on sentence structures identifications and discussion with the
whole class. Students gave the clues for the sentence structures identification to differentiate
the types of sentence structures. The next activity was focusing on the construction of the
compound-complex sentences by joining the clauses given in the worksheet which
combining the compound and complex sentences.
THE RESPONSE
The main objective of the post-test is students will be able to relate the reasons and effects to the
elaboration on the content points of ways to overcome the issue of obesity. This writing activity can
also be assumed as to conduct an experiment on the effectiveness of the intervention activities that
have been done before the post-test.
a. The skills required for the students to answer
i. The format of an article:
Students can apply on the skills how to write an article with the correct layout with the
title, writer’s name and paragraphing. The tone of the essay must be directed to the
audience that conveyed in the question.
ii. The tenses:
Simple present tense is mainly to be used to write the factual elaboration on the
content points for this essay. Therefore, basically students must have the knowledge
and skills of applying the subject-verb agreement in sentence constructions.
iii. The elaborations on the content points:
Students need to have the skills to expand on the content points given and answer
the requirements of the question given. This including every content point with its
supporting details and examples to reinforce the issue discussed in the question.
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Figure 1.
Percentage of Marks for the Post-Test
90 80
75
80 70
MARKS OF THE PRE-TEST 70 70
Student 1 65 65 60 60
Student 270 60 6060 60 60 60 60
Student 3 55 55 55
60 Student 450 50 50 5050
Student 5
Student 65045 45 45 45 40 40 45 40
Student 7
Students 840
Student 9
Student 1030
Student 11
Student 1220
Student 13
Student 1410
Student 15
Student 160
Student 17
Student 18
Student 19
Student 20
Student 21
Student 22
Student 23
Student 24
Student 25
Student 26
Student 27
Student 28
Student 29
Student 30
Student 31
Student 32
5S1 STUDENTS
Figure 2.
Percentage of Marks for the Pre-test and Post-Test
90 80 Pre-test
75 75 75 Post-test
80 70 70 70
65 65 65
70 60 65 60 65 60 60 60
60 6060 60 60 60
60 55 55 55 55 55 555 55 55 55 55
50 50 50 50 50 50 50 50 50
Marks 45 45 45 45 45 45 45 4545 45
50 40 40 40 40 4400 4400 40 40 40
40
30
20
10
0 Student 1
Student 2
Student 3
Student 4
Student 5
Student 6
Student 7
Student 8
Student 9
Student 10
Student 11
Student 12
Student 13
Student 14
Student 15
Student 16
Student 17
Student 18
Student 19
Student 20
Student 21
Student 22
Student 23
Student 24
Student 25
Student 26
Student 27
Student 28
Student 29
Student 30
Student 31
Student 32
5S1 Students
Reflection
The results for the pre-test generally by average were lower than the scores for the post-
test. This can be seen from those moderate ability students who normally scored the
average marks would be able to increase their marks in the language. However, those who
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are in the lower ability group did not show much of improvement which showing that they
need more practices and follow-up activities. As for the higher ability group were able to
sustain their ability to score the higher range marks for their writing during the post-test.
The main factor for this 4-week intervention plans to be effective is the need of the sufficient
time frame. The intervention activities on the grammar gap were taken positively by the
students and to be more concerned on their common grammatical mistakes in their essay
writing.
As for my general reflection, I think conducting this intervention activity needs an efficient
planning and timing. The outcome from this time intervention activities showing not much of
improvement for the weaker ability group of students. Therefore, more practices and
activities should be taken into consideration in terms of the levels of difficulty of the tasks
given. I will consider asking the higher ability group students to assist those weaker ones as
peer coaching can be useful. I personally agree that this is a good learning experience on
handling this intervention activity and will be the tool to help my students improving in their
ongoing writing practices.
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EXPLOITING
STUDENTS’ DATA
AND CLOSING
GAPS IN
ARGUMENTATIVE
WRITING: A CASE
STUDY
WAN SUZYNARITA BINTI WAN AHMAD
NURLINA ONN ABDULLAH
SETTING
The school is in Bandar Kinrara area with the enrolment of 2170 students ranging from
Remove class to Form 5. It was officially established in 2002 with only Form 2 students
enrolled at the beginning. The school has flourished for the past 18 years with the number
of students and classes rising tremendously each year. The school offers pure science,
accounting, arts and computer science classes for Form 4 and Form 5 students. The
students come from various social economic backgrounds with the three major ethnicity:
Malays, Chinese and Indians.
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Generally, the students in this school speak and understand English at an intermediate level.
They can speak and understand reasonably well and use basic English, but still make
mistakes with more complex grammar and vocabulary. However, there are also some
students who can communicate using very simple and basic English, with very limited
vocabulary. SMK Seksyen 4 Bandar Kinrara is one of the good schools amongst 42
secondary schools in Petaling Perdana districts. With the number of 13 English teachers
teaching in this school, we have managed to bring the school to a higher level when the
SPM English results were promising for several years.
Before becoming a secondary school teacher, I received my first training as a teacher in
Temenggong Ibrahim Teachers Training College, now known as Institut Perguruan
Temenggong Ibrahim, back in 1988 - 1990. I was a primary school English teacher for 12
years before pursuing my studies and obtained my first degree, Bachelor of Education
(TESL) minor in Literature at Universiti Putra Malaysia in 2003 – 2006. Literature has been
my passion since I was young and having to meet a strong and influential person in
Literature at the university, have somehow triggered my interest more to further my studies
in this field. Hence, in 2008, I again registered myself at Universiti Putra Malaysia for M.A
and this time specializing in English in World Literature. I am currently working as an English
teacher at SMK Seksyen 4 Bandar Kinrara, Puchong for the past 13 years. I have been
teaching Form 3 and Form 5 students for more than 10 years and have the privileged to
train students in Public Speaking, Choral Speaking and Drama for competitions organised
by PPD. As a teacher, I serve to be the facilitator to guide the students in their lessons
conducted meant for the program.
FOCUS
A total of 19 students from 5 Sains Komputer were selected for this planning. In general,
most of the students could comprehend English Language and some of them could
communicate daily in the language. However, from this study, I observed these my students
encountered various difficulties in writing. The prevalent problem faced by the students was
lacking idea hence making their writing dull and uninteresting. Besides lacking ideas,
students too are weak in comparing, misuse of transitional words and phrases, and also
weak in their sentence structures.
Some students in this class could communicate in English. However, they could be passive
and show no interest to write a complete essay as a written exercise in class. I believe that
these students need to change their perspective and their outlook towards their writing in
English. They must understand that speaking well in English does not mean their writing will
be excelled too.
Few students from this class do not speak English due to mother tongue interference. They
do understand the language, however, but hinders themselves from speaking due to few
factors. They feel shy in making mistakes, especially the girls. Their vocabulary is rather
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limited and hence, they tend to use the same words repetitively in their writing. Their
sentence structures are poor, and they have difficulties with the tenses as well. These
students tend to translate their writing from their mother tongue.
INVESTIGATION
Level 1
The topic chosen for the pre-test was “Would you rather read a book or watch a movie
version of a story? Discuss.” The test was conducted during the MCO period at first.
Students were to email their writings to me after 2 days. However, it was really challenging
for me to receive response from the students. Despite being reminded daily, students did
not complete the task in a given time. I did not blame the students solely because the
situation that the entire world faced then and now, was unprecedented. After reminders
through the WhatsApp group and their emails, finally, I managed to receive 6 essays from
6 students.
When the school was reopened on the 24th of June, 2020, I have decided to conduct the
pre-test again to make sure that all 19 students responded. On the day of the pre-test,
students were instructed to write the essay without teaching them the writing technique or
the process of writing. Nevertheless, some students do have some previous knowledge in
writing argumentative essay. All the students were required to complete their task in an hour
(double period lesson). All the 19 scripts were used as samples for the study.
ABOUT THE PRE-TEST
The pre-test and post test conducted were on argumentative writing. The reason this form
of writing is chosen is because students are less likely to choose this question. Most students
in this class do not favour argumentative writing because they encounter few issues in
regard to answering this form of essay.
The topic chosen for the pre-test was “Would you rather read a book or watch a movie
version of a story? Discuss.” The objective of the pre-test is to evaluate the students’ work
and their level of proficiency. The pre-test is more like a diagnostic test; to determine
students’ prior knowledge on certain topic tested. Students are expected to acquire certain
skills for them to answer the questions correctly and excellently. They are expected to be
able to compare two different ideas, expand ideas, write sentences using the right tenses,
and write complex sentences with dependent and independent clauses.
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RESULTS FOR THE PRE-TEST
The pre-test conducted in class were graded and evaluated using the marking scheme like
the SPM marking. 19 scripts were used as the sample for the case study. This study reveals
students tend to make mistakes on grammatical and non-grammatical, for instance, tenses,
sentence structures, problem in word choices and spelling.
Figure 1.
Percentage for the Pre-Test
35
30
30
MARKS OF THE PRE-TEST 25 20 21 22 24 23 23 22
20 21 20 19 20 19
15
17 16
15
14 14
10
10
5
0 1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
5SK STUDENTS
From this input too, I was able to identify that student are lacking of ideas, hence making
their piece of writing uninteresting and almost all students do not utilize transition words or
phrases in their writing. Most of the students, 10 out of 19 students to be exact, have
problems in writing good sentence structure and are unable to produce longer sentence
structure correctly. However, they are some students who show some attempt to write longer
structure, but their attempt fails due to problems in using the proper transition words and
phrases. From the data, another mistake that often made by students is the word choice.
Students chose wrong words used in the wrong context. Another most common mistakes
are the spelling.
The writing mistakes are summarised in the following points:
1. Book takes about a week or a month to be finished …(Tense: to finish)
2. Some researches propose that watching fantasy movies…(Spelling:
researchers)
3. Some people find books more entertain due to enticing the reader specific details
that engage you. (Word choice: entertaining)
4. Movies are easier to understand the story of it. (Distorted sentence structure)
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5. Moreover, readers will won’t to easily involving in social life too much or overdose.
(Distorted sentence structure)
6. For example, the writter will describe the story one by one. (Spelling: writer)
7. I always find new words or interesting words which I had not heard or seen before.
(Tenses: have)
Level 2
I believe that for the students to be able to write an essay well, they should be able to know
and understand the usage of linkers, to expand ideas, use the right tenses, compare, and
contrast ideas and most importantly, they should be able to write proper sentence structure.
Hence, before the students are given the posttest question, I have planned 4 intervention
activities to be carried out in 4 weeks’ time. However, due to some unforeseen
circumstances, the intervention plans were carried out in 2 weeks’ time instead of 4.
The intervention activities were designed and planned after the pre-test had been carried
out. From my observation, students are weak in some writing skills like expanding ideas due
to poorly formulated topic sentence, weak in comparing ideas, poor sentence structure, lack
of or weak transitions, lack of vocabulary and poor in spelling. The first intervention plan
which was carried out on the 3rd July, 2020, was designed to cater these issues faced by
the students.
I started the intervention plan with comparing and contrasting using appropriate transitional
words and phrases. The learning objective for this plan were for the students to be able to
recognise the linkers and transitional words/ phrases and would be able to use those
phrases in comparing and contrasting statements. During the lesson, I explained what
transition words/ phrases are and the need to use these words in writing. I also explained to
students that without transitions, an essay can be choppy, and it is important to have
transitions between paragraphs, ideas or sentences. I provided a lot of examples of
transitions to make it clearer for the students. I then, elicited and brainstormed ideas from
students and drew their attention to transition words/ phrases that can be used to indicate
two different ideas in comparing and contrasting. Students then rearranged jumbled-up
sentences to form correct ones and highlight the transition words/ phrases found in them.
The jumbled-up sentences are as follow:
1. a bouquet of roses/ allergic/ we/ for/ birthday. / her/ my sister/ is/
to flowers, / even though/ bought
2. very smart. / with/ brother, / her/ in contrast/ is/ she
3. just like/ bloomer, / Larry/ a late/ his/ will/ older brothers. / be
4. smoking/ contribute/ similarly, / the acts of being/ to a/of heart
disease/ overweight/ person’s risk/ and
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As for the fast finishers, I made them to build their own sentences using the transition words
they have learned in class. Few students were called at random to write their sentences on
the white board and we discussed as a whole class.
The second intervention plan was carried out on the 7th of July, 2020. The lesson was
conducted in an hour lesson. Students were expected to be able to write a topic sentence
focusing on the comparing and to be able to write at least 2 supporting details to form a
paragraph. In this lesson, again I brainstormed ideas from students on the similarities and
differences of the topic. Students examined their findings, and later placed them under the
same ideas.
From there, students came up with a suitable topic sentence and at least 2 supporting details
to form a simple paragraph. However, not all students were able to construct proper topic
sentence and supporting details correctly. Therefore, the success criteria were not achieved
100% due to the different levels of students’ ability. Like in the report earlier, these students
come from different backgrounds and some even have mother tongue interference.
Therefore, I decided to repeat the same lesson with the same activities and do more writing
exercises for reinforcement.
The third intervention plan was on the simple present tense. From this lesson, students
should be able to identify and differentiate the 1st, 2nd and 3rd person singular and form at
least 5 sentences using the Simple Present Tense. Due to the new norms and regulations,
all activities designed for the students were carried out by keeping in mind the practice of
social distancing.
As a kickstart to this lesson, I acted out few phrases without speaking, students are to guess
what the phrases were. I told the answer in full sentence using the present tense. Students
were to make a list of what they do daily as a routine. At random, students reported to the
whole class what they do daily or what some of their habits are. I highlighted on things they
do on a daily or weekly basis are called habitual actions. In pairs (keeping a meter distance
from each other), students shared and exchanged each other’s information and started a
conversation in 1st person singular and 2nd person singular. Then they reported their findings
to the class using the 3rd person singular.
The activities in class were carried out mostly individually, and even if it was in pairs, I made
sure they kept a distance apart. I made sure and highlighted that the letter ‘s’ was added for
the 3rd person singular. I explained the same for the plural person and stated few examples
through students’ earlier findings. Finally, based on the discussion in the class, students
wrote at least 5 complete sentences in Simple Present Tense.
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The fourth intervention plan was designed meant to focus on the sentence structure;
dependent and independent clauses. From this lesson, students should be able to identify
at least 3 dependent and independent clauses and build at least 3 sentences of their own.
However, not all the students managed to acquire and build the correct sentences with
dependent and independent clauses. So, I have to repeat the same lesson in the next class,
focusing more on identifying the 2 clauses. Students write and discuss their sentences as a
whole class.
For a start, students studied an opening line from a novel that I displayed. They are to
paraphrase the line in different ways. I walked around making sure the sentences they wrote
were complex sentences, with dependent and independent clauses. Students shared their
sentences with the whole class, and they decided which of the sentences were the most
captivating. Then, they identified the clauses by highlighting or circling them. Based on these
mentor sentences activity as guidance, students build their own complex sentences with
dependent and independent clauses using the appropriate transition words or phrases. I
encouraged more students to share their sentences on the whiteboard.
THE RESPONSE
The post-test was conducted after all the 4 intervention plans were carried out successfully.
However, due to some complications, I had to carry out the post-test with a different title but
still an argumentative essay. The post-test question is “Should traditional classes be
replaced with the online class? Discuss.” The post-test was conducted to test their ability in
writing; focusing on the gaps found during the pre-test. The weaknesses found in students’
writing were lacking transition words/ phrases, lacking ideas, unfocused topic sentence, and
confusing sentence structure, to name just a few.
The objectives of the post-test are as follows:
i. To ensure students can compare and contrast using appropriate
transitional words and phrases correctly.
ii. To be able to write a topic sentence focusing on the comparison/contrast
and write appropriate supporting details to form complete paragraphs
iii. To be able to write using proper tenses.
iv. To be able to write complex sentences with dependent and independent clauses.
Based on the observation and data acquired, students needed to use more transition words/
phrases to link their ideas, sentences as well as to link paragraphs. Students too need to
clearly state their subject matter of the paragraph without being too difficult to understand.
This is important because only by having good topic sentence, students would be able to
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expand their ideas in the supporting details. For them to do so, students also need to be
able to write sentences with dependent and independent clauses.
The post test went through the same 3 step process as the pre-test: identifying, classifying
and prioritizing the errors. The scripts were marked and total scores were awarded based
on the marking done for SPM paper. The following figure is the marks of the post-test
presented in a graph below;
Figure 1.
Percentage of Marks for the Post-Test
Percentage of Marks for the Post-Test
40
33 35
30
MARKS OF THE POST-TEST 35 31 30
30 28
25 25 20 20 21 24 22
25 22 19 21 20
20 19
15
15
10
5
0 1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
5SK STUDENTS
The question chosen for the Post-Test was “Should traditional classes be replaced with
the online class? Discuss.”. It was similar to the Pre-Test “Would you rather read a book
or watch a movie version of a story? Discuss.” as both questions were argumentative
essays. Both questions were easily related to the students as they are familiar with the
idea, especially the Post-Test question where they had a fair share of experience during
the MCO period. This was also one of the reasons why I decided to change the Post-Test
question from “Should students be assigned with more or less homework daily? Discuss.”
to the one mentioned earlier. There was no further discussion of the question. I did not
provide any assistance throughout the tests. They carried out both the tests, pre and post,
independently.
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Figure 2.
Percentage of Marks for the Pre-test and Post-Test
40
33 35
30
35 3031 30
30 28
25 25 24 2324 23
19 2021 1920
25 22 21 22 2120 21 22 22
19 19
Marks 20 2020
20 17 16 14 14 15
15
15
10
10
5
0 1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
5SK Students
Pre-test Post-test
Referring to Figure 2, comparing between the two tests carried out, it is clearly seen that
there are some improvements shown in the students’ results. During the Pre-Test, out of
19 students, 11 obtained 20 marks and below. These students roughly had similar errors
which are lacking of vocabulary, confusing sentence structures, lacking of ideas and
wrongly used tenses. They do not use transition words/ phrases in their writing to link 2
different ideas, sentences or paragraphs. Some have the attempt to do so, nevertheless,
number of errors are noticeable in their writing. Whereas the remaining 8 students, do
make the same mistakes occasionally but the frequency of errors are not as visible as the
former. Almost all students have the similar error which is word choice. They write using
inappropriate word in the wrong context. Students too, often make spelling error in their
writing.
Nonetheless, students show some improvements in their Post-Test. Out of 19, only 6
students scored 20 and below. They still make common mistakes though, like confusing
sentence structure, but the frequency of errors is reduced. More students are able to use
transition words/ phrases appropriately, hence making their writing more organised and
united. They write in a well organised manner, with suitable topic sentence and supporting
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details to form paragraphs. This was made possible due to the exercises during the
intervention lessons conducted. More students can write good topic sentence in each
paragraph and provide related supporting details. However, all students need more
exercises and practices in their writing for them to produce better essays. They must work
more on their spelling and choices of diction in their writing. In general, students show
better results, scored better in their Post-Test after I carried out all the 4 intervention plans.
REFLECTIONS
Overall, students still have not overcome their gaps in writing, for instance, spelling, tenses,
appropriate diction even though some improvements are evident. From this case study, I
believe that students need more motivation to write and as writing is a continuous process,
they desperately need more practice to make their writing, if not perfect, near perfect. Since
writing is not like doing Maths practice, I believe that it is vital to create students’ interests in
writing before asking them to write the essays. How do we create their interests? How do
we make them to write daily? Perhaps occasionally, students will be given the freedom to
choose their own topics which are more related to them to encourage and develop their
interests in writing. Writing a journal or a blog is one of the ways that I would encourage the
students to practice. At the same time, providing more practice and guiding them in grammar
like tenses, subject-verb-agreement, adjectives, adverbs, to name just a few, will generally
help students to overcome their writing problems as well.
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Appendices
INTERVENTION PLAN WORKSHEETS
WORKSHEET A
NAME : _____________________________________________
CLASS : ________________________
A. Rearrange the following jumbled up phrases to form correct sentences.
1. a bouquet of roses/ allergic/ we/ for/ birthday. / her/ my sister/ is/ to flowers, /
even though/ bought
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
2. very smart. / with/ brother, / her/ in contrast/ is/ she
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
3. just like/ bloomer, / Larry/ a late/ his/ will/ older brothers. / be
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
4. smoking/ contribute/ similarly, / the acts of being/ to a/of heart disease/
overweight/ person’s risk/ and
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
5. they resist/ about sloppy trash pick-ups, / yet/ paying higher taxes/ Residents
complain/ of the service. / for the improvement/
__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________
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WORKSHEET B
NAME : _____________________________________________
CLASS : ________________________
A. Write the similarities and the differences between books and movies.
Group them in the same ideas.
Comparison (similarities) between books and movies.
1. ___________________________________________________________________
2.
____________________________________________________________________
3.
____________________________________________________________________
Contrasts (differences) between books and movies.
1.
____________________________________________________________________
2.
____________________________________________________________________
3.
____________________________________________________________________
B. Write a suitable topic sentences and two supporting details to form short
paragraphs.
_____________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________
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IMPROVING
STUDENTS’
WRITING THROUGH
DATA-DRIVEN
METHOD
RITA GARA
BETTY D PRIMUS
SETTING
SM. St. Francis Xavier is located in the heart of Keningau, 3 kilometres from the District
Education Department. There are about 44 teachers and 895 students of different
backgrounds studying in this school. It was officially opened on January 4, 1960, with only
48 students. The first principal was Pastor George Bauer (1961-1966) who was also a
primary school principal. In 1962, the school made history in Sabah when all twelve of its
Form 3 students passed the Sabah Lower Certificate examination.
To this day, the school has been in operation for 60 years and many still consider it a school
that has produced many students with excellent skills and achievements, especially in
English. These people have successfully advanced to higher education throughout Malaysia
and abroad. Among them, there are doctors, teachers, engineers, lawyers and politicians.
Due to the excellent performance seen through the former students, it is not surprising that
this school is still considered as one of the famous and popular schools in Keningau. Many
parents from various backgrounds whether in or outside the Keningau district strive to
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ensure that their children get a place in this school. This is simply to give opportunities to
their children besides excelling in other subjects and fields, they can also master English
well; since most of the residents in this district know the background of this school which
uses English as the main medium of communication from the beginning of its operation.
Writing is an essential skill for language production. However, it is considered a complex
skill, particularly in English as a second language (ESL) contexts where students face many
challenges in writing. Writing is a significant skill to be mastered for students to write better.
Unfortunately, most students fail to develop their writing skills even after finishing school.
Many students are generally weak at it. They cannot write correct sentences due to vague
ideas to produce a good essay. There are many reasons for this to happen, such as lack of
vocabulary, lack of writing practice, poor grammar skills, and the inability to structure ideas
effectively
In the past years, St. Francis Xavier is known for his excellent performance in English as
the language is the main communication medium in conveying all forms of information,
including in the teaching, and learning process. However, now the school is trying to get
back its best fit which is a bigger problem to maintain as English is no longer a popular
subject and more and more students without a good language background are studying in
this school.
Many students in this school are from the Sabah natives, namely Kadazan, Dusun and Murut
and a small number are from other races such as Javanese, Chinese, Bugis, Indians and
foreigners. Most of the students’ families engage in agricultural activities. They cultivate rice
and vegetables for marketing. Apart from that, they also cultivate commodities such as oil
palm and rubber. There are also some of them who run livestock activities. However, there
are also a small number of the students’ families who work with the government or private
bodies.
The students who attend school here are students who have a good level of discipline. Many
them are students who show a high interest in learning. They show interest in all subjects
and things taught in school including English.
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To learn and master English is a great desire among most students but the inevitable
constraint is their ability to master the language. This is because this language is not the
language of everyday speech at home. It is only used as best as possible while at school
during the learning of the subject. A family background that not all have a good English
proficiency background is also a problem that affects their proficiency in the use of English.
Undoubtedly, without good instruction and less language practice, it is difficult for students
to show good performance in their academics related to the subject; this fact has caused
English performance to decline slowly. Therefore, help is needed for students in this school
to perfect their writing skills and improve their achievement in the subject.
I have been a teacher for almost 30 years now. Before teaching in secondary school, I was
a primary teacher for 16 years. Being a teacher is not easy. Without passion in this
profession, facing more than hundreds of students with unpredictable characteristics and
various backgrounds in every teaching day would be a great challenge, especially when
teaching a subject that not everyone can acquire well, such as English.
In my time teaching English, I realised the difficulty students faced was because the
language was not their cup of tea. They were not born with it. They were not even good in
their mother tongue; therefore, what I expect is what challenged me the most. So many
years of teaching, I have tried to find the best solution to help my students with this subject.
One method uses students' performance data to identify their different abilities and a few
more shared by other colleagues from other schools. All these are meant to help students
build up their self-confidence to learn the language and overcome their fear and weakness.
As the Head of the English Panel in this school, I am responsible for ensuring that all the
teachers under the Panel would play their respective roles to help their students, so sharing
what I have learned from this program would be thoughtful. I hope that doing this program
as a team with all the English teachers in my school will help us improve students'
performances in every assessment they take, especially with their writing skills.
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FOCUS
The samples chosen for this program were taken from one of the form 5 classes, consisting
of 17 male and 21 female students from various backgrounds. They were from 5 Zircon, the
second-best class in this school. Most of them live within 5-10 km from Keningau town. They
were mainly from middle to lower-income families. These students do not speak English at
home. The languages used as a form of communication are mainly Malay, Dusun, Kadazan,
and Murut.
From general observation, two main factors identified as the probable cause of students'
lack of interest to learn English in this class were their negative language acceptance. They
did not like to learn it because it was difficult for them to understand. The other factor was
that they did not get support or motivation from their family to create a positive environment
for them to learn the language. They do not speak the language at home. Sometimes some
are only exposed to the language through English entertainment such as songs and movies.
In school, teachers made it compulsory for them to use the language for communication
purposes during English classes. Most of the Time, teachers force them to speak.
Otherwise, they will not even say a word.
INVESTIGATION
Level 1
The first level of my investigation started off with a pre-test. I chose Directed Writing
question which would require the students to write an article for the school newsletter. The
format was like the SPM format where the points were provided for the students to work on
the article. the objectives of the pre-test were enable me to
i) to identify the gaps students have in the test.
ii) create appropriate interventions to foster students’ improvement.
The administration of the pre-test was done during the March test. The question was taken
from the English 1119/1 Module for SPM, Section A: Directed Writing. The question given
was a writing task on an Article with an allocated time of 45 minutes for 35 marks. During
the pre-test, students were informed clearly to write the article using the correct format. They
must read the rubric carefully and identify the keywords correctly to answer the question
successfully. They must use all the points given in their essay and expand all the facts and
add elaborations and examples to them.
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On the other hand, students were already taught how to write an article in their previous
lesson, so it is expected that they should be able to do the task well. The students' scripts
were analysed holistically during the marking of their papers. The focus would be on
grammar, language, and the development of the idea. During the pre-test, students were
clearly informed to write the article using the correct format and use all the points given in
their essay. Students were already taught how to write an article in their previous lesson.
The students' scripts were analysed holistically during the marking of their papers, which
focused on grammar, language, and idea development. The students’ scores for the pre-
test are shown in Table 1.
Figure 1.
Pre-test scores
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Based on the pre-test data in Figure 1, only 12 students scored 20-26 out of 35 marks
(green) allocated. It showed that students had difficulty achieving 32 marks, which is the
minimum mark that will determine them to get band A for this section of the question.
Seventeen students scored 17-19 marks (yellow) showed the students might omit a few
points because maybe they have missed the points. Nine students obtained the lowest 11-
16 marks (red), which indicates that some points not stated might be because the meaning
was incomprehensible for them.
Apart from that, I have analyzed the frequency of gaps made by students in their pre-tests.
The gaps covered most of the important elements that needed to be used correctly to obtain
good results in writing, such as the errors in using a preposition, modal verb, word choice,
sentence structure, subject-verb agreement, adjective, tenses, infinitive, verb, and spelling.
However, for the implementation of the intervention, I had chosen 4 top errors that I thought
essential to carry out for my students. They were the sentence structure, tenses, subject-
verb agreement, and word choice gaps.
To better understand my students’ problems, I have also analysed and categorised the
errors to identify the patterns that could help me plan an effective intervention to overcome
such issues. I noticed that students were undeniably struggling with the meaning of the
keywords, which led them to uncertainty to expand their ideas well.
I also found that most of my students faced problems in identifying and using correct tenses,
weak in determining the appropriate words to use according to the context of the sentences,
constructing proper sentences, and difficulties with subject-verb agreement. However, the
most frequent error was sentence structure, word choice, and subject-verb agreement. This
matter involved all 38 students, including those with good results. I think for them to write
something on paper is crucial rather than doing it seriously. They did it effortlessly because
they felt intimidated by the number of words that they needed to write. They thought that it
is quite a considerable number of words to reach.
Besides that, I also noticed that quite several the students became less motivated to answer
the question because they could not understand the vocabulary and the question’s
requirements, which was difficult for them. They did attempt to use complex sentences, but
most of the time, the sentences were missing the real point or ideas. They frequently made
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serious mistakes. They were very dependent on guidelines from the teacher to answer the
question. Undeniably, English is not their native language, but the fact is, as a second
language, it still has an impact on their abilities to communicate or write well in English.
Other than that, they were demotivated when it comes to writing an essay. As a result, they
alleviate their task during the pre-test.
It took me some time to analyse and categorise the students’ errors and identify patterns
that could help plan effective interventions. By listing out the students' mistakes on their pre-
test papers, which I regretfully did not do, offered a big help in completing the analysis. It
assisted to show a broad vision of the students’ problems in completing their writing tasks.
Since I did not list out the mistakes students’ did on their papers, it had taken me some time
to recheck and re-identify the gaps before finally managing to analyse them. This experience
was a valuable lesson to learn, which I should never forget to do for the post-test papers
and for more to come assessments in the future.
LEVEL 2
Intervention Plan
To plan for the interventions after the pre-test and identification of top-ranking gaps, I had
prepared a 4-week intervention plan for the 5 Zircon targeted students. I have noticed the
gaps that the students were undoubtedly weak at were the following. Therefore, I have
chosen them as the main issues.
i) Tenses – Present verb tense
ii) Sentence Structure – Run-on sentences
iii) Idea expansion
The 4-week intervention was successfully conducted as planned even though there were
school programs and panel activities that needed to be done at the same time. The
interventions were carried out during normal lessons for five periods a week. The
subsequent figure displays the planning for the 4-week intervention.
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Figure 2.
The 4-Week Intervention Planning
Week 1 Week 2
Gap: Tense Gap: Tense
Week 3 Week 4
Gap: Sentence Gap: Idea
Structure expansion
In the first week of the intervention plan, I have conducted a lesson on tenses. This lesson
focused on the present and the past tenses. I have focused more on the present simple as
few of the students still have a problem differentiating the two tenses. For this lesson, I used
a few of the students’ sample scripts to show the mistakes they have made. The students
were asked to identify the sentences using the wrong usage of the tenses and suggested
how they were supposed to be written accurately.
In the second week lesson, the intervention was still on the tense problem. For this lesson,
I focused on the verb tense by providing a song activity. Students were asked to list out as
many verbs as they can get from the song. They were then shared and justified why they
chose the words as verbs. Students were then asked to fill in the blank lines with the verbs
they think appropriate before listening to the song and checked for the correct use of verbs
while listening. As for the next activity, students were to discuss the song's title and write
about it by relating the title to their life experiences.
In the third week lesson, I did the sentence structure gap, which was the Run-on Sentences.
The students are pretty good at writing; however, they have serious issues with their writing.
They tended to write lengthy sentences; however, they did not know how to use punctuation
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correctly. This situation caused them to lose a generous number of marks for their use of
language. Again, in this lesson, I used the students’ scripts as samples to show the mistakes
they have made. Students were shown videos to understand better Run-on sentences, and
later they were asked to mend the sentences in an appropriate way.
For the last week, I did the idea expansion gap. The students were relatively weak with how
to expand content points. To save them from thinking and finding the appropriate vocabulary
to write, they preferred to combine more than one point in a sentence which will cause them
to lose marks for content. In this lesson, the intervention was to help students to practice
expanding content points and to add effect and example as the elaborations for the ideas.
For activity 1, I briefly explained the present tense and its concept to the students and
provided a few examples. To ensure their understanding, I asked them to give examples of
a few Simple Present Tense sentences. Students were able to provide the examples given
correctly using simple sentences.
After explaining, I then showed a short video lesson on Simple Present Tense: When to use
it. While watching the video, the students were told to jot down notes. When they had
finished watching the video, I asked them a few questions about what they observed. This
technique is to make sure whether the students were paying attention to the lesson and
understood what had been explained.
For the next activity, I gave the students two paragraphs from other students’ sample scripts
containing tense errors and asked them to read and correct the mistakes. I then randomly
picked two students to write the corrected versions of the paragraphs on the writing board
before telling them to rewrite the paragraphs in their exercise book. The last activity was the
students were to rewrite a Past tense paragraph into the Present tense. Before I ended the
lesson, I told the students to write a straightforward present tense and randomly picked
students I thought had the most issue with tenses to share their sentences with the class.
The next intervention, before starting with the lesson, I reminded the students of the
previous lesson by asking a few students to write examples of present tense sentences on
the board. Later, I asked other students to change the present tense sentences into past
tense and underline the verbs used in both sentences. I then explained the difference
between the verbs in their usage with the correct tenses.
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Students were told to listen to a song with the title ‘Don’t give Up’ by Bruno Mars for the next
activity. This song is appropriate to use to teach the present tense. Before listening to the
song, students were told to list out all the verbs they can get from the song while listening to
it. Students with the most words were stamped rewarded. Later, the students were given
worksheets with lyrics of the song, and they were to fill in the lines with the correct verbs
from the wordlists. Students were to check whether their answer was correct by listening to
the song again.
The next activity was students were told to study the song's title and think of one life
experience as a student that they can relate to the song’s title. The students were then told
to write a short paragraph about their experiences. They can use the listed-out verbs they
had done earlier for the description in their writing. Students were given choices whether to
write using the present or past tense but reminded to use the tenses consistently in their
writing. A few students were chosen randomly to share what they have written with the class.
As the last activity, I played the song again and let the students enjoy themselves by singing
along.
The first activity for this lesson was watching a video lesson on run-on sentences. But before
that, students were asked whether they know what run-on Sentences are. I briefly explained
that Run-on Sentences are two complete sentences that run or combine in one sentence
and should be separated into two sentences using the correct punctuation.
While watching the video lesson on run-on Sentences: Examples & Corrections, students
were informed to jot down important notes for them. After finishing the video, students were
asked questions related to the content. I had a few students randomly picked to respond to
the questions.
Later, I displayed a few examples of run-on Sentences taken from the students’ script and
discussed the errors in them. A few students were asked to identify the mistakes, write them
on the board, and other students were asked to correct the mistakes. I helped them to do
the corrections.
For the next activity, I distributed worksheets containing a few run-on Sentences taken from
the students’ scripts. The student’s task was to correct the errors individually. When they
were done, the students wrote their sentences on the board, and the other students rewrote
the updated versions of the sentences in their exercise book.
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Before the lesson ended, I asked a few students to share what they have learned and what
they think about the lesson. A few students admitted that they would write continuously
without caring about using punctuation. They were afraid that they would not have ample
time to finish writing; therefore, they needed to write faster and not write correctly. On the
other hand, this lesson gave them some insight into writing correctly and carefully.
The first activity in this lesson was to identify the 12 content points given in the students’
pre-test question paper (Paper 1- Section A Directed Writing). Since students made many
mistakes in doing the writing, I chose to use the same question paper for this lesson. Later,
I told the students to list out the points and combine them to be written into three paragraphs.
I suggested they combine 4 points to be written in one paragraph. But it was just a
suggestion, so the students were still allowed to develop their own strategies.
For the next activity, students were required to expand the point one by one in complete
sentences and later added the effects and examples as the elaborations for each of them.
In this case, students’ writing mistakes tended to combine more than one point in one
sentence and shared the same effect and examples as the elaboration. Therefore, this
lesson was to help students to be aware of the crucial mistakes they kept on making without
realising the consequences.
Before they started with the activity, I provided them with an example using content point 1
to ensure they know what they were supposed to do and how to do it correctly. While
students were doing the task, I assisted those with problems in finding ideas to complete
their sentences.
When they had finished, a few students were selected randomly to share part of their tasks.
As the final activity, students were asked to rewrite their completed tasks in a writing
template following the correct format of an article writing. They were to submit the task once
they had finished it.
THE RESPONSE
A post-test was planned to determine the impact of the intervention on the students’
progress especially on the errors. The question prepared for the post-test was parallel with
the pre-test: students were asked to write an article for a school newsletter. However, the
points provided were not the same as the pre-test. The aim for this post-test being conducted
was to enable teachers to:
i) view the effectiveness of the interventions toward students’ performance
ii) enable teachers to create appropriate interventions to foster students’
improvement.
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The post-test was administered during the two-period English sessions. The type of question
given was based on SPM English 1119/1, Section A - Directed writing. The question given
was an article writing task with an allocated time of 45 minutes for 35 marks, like the pre-
test. It was taken from one of the state’s trial papers. Students were required to write an
article on the importance of reading. For this post-test, I made a few changes to the question
to parallel with the pre-test question.
To ensure students successfully attempt the question, they need to know the correct tenses
to be used and know how to construct sentences properly with proper grammar. They must
also have adequate vocabularies to write excellent and meaningful sentences and learn how
to use the appropriate linkers to connect their ideas. To gain better marks in terms of
language, they must have the skill to expand their ideas well by providing good effects and
examples as elaborations for the points given.
The students were fully aware that I would give them a test after they had done all four
interventions. So, different from the pre-test, I can see that my students were ready to write
their essays. They had done their best to write even though the time given was only 45
minutes. This awareness was to train them to write within the suggested allocated time
during regular class tests, and they would take a longer time to finish.
During the post-test, students were advised to read the question carefully before starting
writing. I had thoroughly analysed all 38 of the students' scripts holistically while marking
their papers as I did with the pre-test scripts, focusing more on sentence structure, grammar,
and ideas development. I did this by underlining all the mistakes and errors identified at the
end of each script. The students’ scores for their post-test are shown in Figure 2.
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Figure 2.
Post -Test Scores
The results in Figure 2 show significant improvement for 30 students who scored 20-29
marks. Three students achieved the highest mark, which is 29. They were student 4, student
6, and student 37, each with an increment of 5 marks (student 4), three marks (student 4),
and four marks (student 37). Overall, 35 students had managed to improve their marks in
the post-test compared to the pre-test. However, students 8, student 13, and student 22 did
not manage to secure their spots. These three students were unsuccessful in
comprehending a few of the content points. Therefore, they failed to gain better marks due
to their weaknesses. Unfortunately, not even one of the students managed to score 32
marks, which was the minimum mark that will determine them to get band A for this section.
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To understand the results better, a comparison of the students’ performance in both pre-test
and post-test is shown in table 3. Based on the data, 33 students had managed to improve
their marks in the post-test compared to their pre-test. The data also shows that student 18,
student 27, and student 33 had obtained a high increment of marks in their post-test. Based
on the excellent results of the students in the post-test displayed on table, figures, and
charts, it appears that the intervention done for this class was a success.
Figure 3.
Pre-test and Post-test Comparisons
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Based on the overall findings, there was a significant improvement in all the four gaps
focused on my intervention plan. It shows that the students were able to develop their ideas
better. Although the gaps still appear, the decrease in all errors shows that the intervention
plan worked and gradually helped to lower the gap occurrences. I believe the improvement
will be more significant if there is more time for implementation. On the brighter side, I am
happy that the students are now more motivated to complete the tasks given rather than
giving up in the middle of their writing. They are now able to write more.
On the other hand, the inconsistency used in the present tense in describing verbs that
happen in the present showed tremendous improvement since they had already been
exposed to the concept. They were able to use simple present tense correctly even though
not so perfect in using the present continuous, which was also required to produce a better
writing script. Nevertheless, the common mistakes in simple present tense were reduced
after the intervention plan was conducted. And again, I believe with more ample time, the
improvement will be more remarkable.
REFLECTION
One of the most enjoyable moments of learning a language is when things make sense,
when you understand a rule, or when you make your own which proves to be true. Teaching
is my passion, and when my students successfully grasp what I am trying to convey, it ignites
my spirit to do more. Being an educator with young people from all fields of different
backgrounds has been a great pleasure showered by amazing experiences. I have learnt
many new techniques and strategies to help my students to learn better in all probability.
The most important part is that my students feel involved in the learning, making it more
meaningful to consider they authentically make the errors.
At first, I was sceptical about this program. I was unsure whether it could be implemented
well with my students since I have different students with contrasting behaviour this year.
And as a teacher, I am the one who knows my students best. However, in the end, I was
thankful that I had been given this opportunity. This course has provided an expansive view
of the intervention needed to cater to the students’ needs in learning. It was an excellent
and welcoming intervention for teachers with problems finding a solution to help their
students to be able to perform well in academics.
During the implementation of the interventions, I noticed that given enough facilitation and
exposure to activities that address the learning areas they are weak at could help them
reach their real potential in the targeted subject. I also noticed that the students become
more responsible for their own learning after each intervention. I was impressed to see them
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