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excitedly discussing and sharing their findings or answers with each other. Whenever they
were confused and needed to know the meanings of certain words or did not know how to
use the words in a sentence, they would approach their fellow students whom they thought
were more knowledgeable for help. They even came to me for help if they felt it was
necessary. These episodes are how I realised their huge interest in learning English even
though they are not that brilliant. And this was what had led me to want to find the most
appropriate strategy to help them in their learning.

However, one of the obstacles in unlocking the true potential of this intervention plan is time
constraint. Even though there are only a few gaps identified and chosen, it consumes the
implementation time and makes the number of weeks to carry out the intervention
inadequate. Grammatical errors sometimes produced by students are done out of habit. A
mistake that is not immediately given corrective feedback will probably become part of their
language collection, which explains most students having difficulty and inconsistencies in
the correct present or past tense. One week to focus on one gap is not enough to reinforce
students’ knowledge in any particular area. Hence, the time frame should be prolonged, and
the number of gaps should be narrowed to only three significant gaps. This method, in turn,
will produce a more focused intervention plan and richer data.

It is hoped that the findings of this intervention plan will be helpful to provide insights and
indirectly facilitate the teaching and learning of the SPM English Paper 1. (Presently, it is
Paper 2 in the new SPM CEFR format).

Additional Note:
Initially, I was doubtful whether implementing this intervention with the students in my
school would succeed. However, thanks to my colleagues for their bright ideas and
inspiring support in ensuring we could achieve what we had hoped for; improving the
students’ achievement in English. It was a surprise pleasure for us when the SPM
2020 result was announced recently, and our school was the top in the district with
excellent performance in all subjects, including English. My sincere gratitude to the
ELTC officers and the mentors for giving us the opportunity to explore this
outstanding method. It was such a joyful moment to experience one of the wonderful
moments in our teaching line when our effort and hard work were acknowledged and
rewarded.

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APPENDIX A


Materials & Worksheet

The verbs in the text should all be in the present simple tense. Find 16 verbs that are in the
past tense and correct them.

Mrs. Cable was the richest woman in the city, but she is also a busy body. She
always wanted to know what everybody is doing. When she needs something she rang a bell
and a servant came.

One day a truck stops in front of her house and three men got out. They are
carrying a large box. Mrs. Cable sees this and told her servant, Sam, to go and see what
the men were doing. Sam goes out and spoke to the men but they don't tell him. When
he came back Mrs. Cable is very angry with him.

Next, she sent George to find out. He didn't want to go at first and Mrs. Cable told him he
is afraid.When he goes out the men ignored him when he said good morning. He tries again
but this time the big man hit him in the stomach and he fell on the ground. Mrs.Cable sees
all this and went down to the street. The men took her by the arms and put her in the box.

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APPENDIX A


(Materials & Worksheets)

Week 2 Intervention


List out as many verbs as you can while listening to the song






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Go back to the title of the song, Don’t Give Up. Discuss by relating the title with your life experience as
a student. You can use the verbs that you have listed out while listening to the song earlier. Share
your ideas with the class.

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APPENDIX A

Write out the article by expanding the content points given.

Introduction put your career
(Paragraph 1) forward

Body 1 (content) Body 2 (content)
Paragraph 2) (Paragraph 3)

international language help in travels

higher learning enjoy learning like
never before

secure a job digital age
Own idea
communicate with
people Own idea
Conclusion
Access to language

Body 3 (content)
(Paragraph 4)
Medium of success

Appreciate literary works

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LEARNERS’

WRITING
DIFFICULTIES IN A
RURAL SCHOOL:

A CASE STUDY

NURUL NAJIHAH ROSLI
SITI NURBAYA

SETTING

It is one of the Islamic schools in Terengganu, Malaysia. This school was opened on 1 July
1958 with 40 students and a teacher; however, in 2020, it had more than 700 students and
about 100 teachers and staffs. This school was located in the town of Marang and closely
located to the Marang District Education Office. In order to enrol to the school, the students
were needed to go through a process. First, they had to pass the criteria of getting minimum
C in all subjects in UPSR, be interviewed and sit for a test that was mainly related to Arabic
language.

Writing in English, as it is a second language, is a challenging task for ESL students as their
first language interference may affect their ability to write proficiently. Malaysian students
normally face difficulties in understanding the word order in English as their national
language, which is Malay, does not have the same structure of word order as English. As
stated by Leki (1992), ESL students have difficulties in learning and focusing on the English

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word order or word forms. Derivatives in English grammar is another cause of ESL students’
confusion as a word can transform into a different grammatical category. Without clear
understanding of various grammatical categories or parts of speech, ESL students may not
be able to form a correct sentence structure as they may have confusion in determining the
right words to be used. In 2016, Fareed and Bilal found that grammar and syntax are the
major language issues in the learners’ writing. In the study, the errors identified include
incorrect use of prepositions, articles, tenses, singular/plural, verbs, sentence structure, and
the use of informal and spoken expressions. The learners in their study also faced
vocabulary problems as they were not aware of collocational and connotational meanings
of the words. In summary, from the studies shared, I concluded that teachers should play a
vital role by assessing students’ writing skill and focusing on students’ deficiencies. A
responsible teacher would be a reactive reader, who assists students recognize and resolve
writing problems (Ghabool et al., 2012).

As a teacher in this school, I noticed several difficulties with English language among the
students. The major issue faced by them was they had a tendency to to do direct translation
from their mother tongue, Malay language, to English language. This problem directly
affected their ability to form a good sentence structure for English language as they
translated what they thought in Malay into English word by word. Sometimes, I needed to
read their sentences several times in order to understand their intended meanings. Besides,
my students also had difficulties in differentiating words that were formed based on the same
base word. For instance, the words ‘health’, ‘healthy’ and ‘healthiness’. Due to this
confusion, my students’ sentences were awkward as they misused the derivatives. In
addition, my students did not have a vast vocabulary. Hence, it affected their ability to use
precise word for certain situation. For example, the words ‘watch’ and ‘see’ as well as ‘listen’
and ‘hear’. Thus, I realized that I held a massive responsibility to amend and improve their
English language as their deficiencies are curable. With the right interventions, the students
might be able to minimize their difficulties and produce better sentence structures.

I am a novice teacher with an almost four-year experience in teaching English to high school
students especially Form 5 students. I was posted to an Islamic secondary school,
Sekolah Menengah Agama Marang on April 2018. Prior to that experience, in 2015, I had
practicum in an all-girls secondary school, Sekolah Menengah Kebangsaan Perempuan

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Bukit Kuda, Klang, Selangor. During my practicum days, I was assigned a Form 4 class,

which had mix racial students, including Malay, Chinese and Indian. That was actually my

first experience teaching students from various racial backgrounds.

Plus, it was also a special experience for me as a teacher as it was not a co-ed school. I
had a chance to experience a wonderful life lesson as a teacher there. Since I studied at a
co-ed religious school during my secondary studies, I had never had the experience of being
in almost 99% female populated and mix racial compound. Majority of the teachers there
were also females and there were Chinese, Indian and Malay teachers. I learnt a lot from
both teachers and students along the three months of my practicum. The experience I
gained from this school had tremendously prepared me to teach in my current school. Even
though I was posted to a religious co-ed school, my practicum experience prepared me in
teaching the students in SMA Marang. Furthermore, there were also abundant new lessons
I learnt from the teachers and students there. This school was also special because it was
in a rural area as opposed to SMK Perempuan Bukit Kuda, which was located in the city.
Therefore, every school had its own specialties to offer and lessons to be learnt by me as a
teacher.

FOCUS

The students who were involved in my case study were my 5 Ibnu Sina. The distribution of
gender in the class were 11 boys and 9 girls. It was a science stream class and there were
20 students in the class. Basically, their English proficiency would be categorized as lower
intermediate level and several of them were higher intermediate and novice.

Based on my observations teaching 5 Ibnu Sina for the second year, I could list some of the
problems that they faced in their writing.

1) tenses,
2) word choice,
3) lack of vocabularies, and
4) relative pronoun.
I noticed my students would struggle a lot when they wanted to use the correct tenses in
their essays. For example, adding the “-d” or “-ed” at the end of the verbs to indicate past

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tense. Sometimes, they overgeneralized the rule to all verbs including irregular ones. For

instance, instead of using ‘taught’ for past tense form of ‘teach’, some of them used

‘teached’. Besides, some of my students were also confused on the past participle form. The

problem they faced was they were confused on when to use past tense form of a verb and

also past perfect form of the verb. This led to a struggle for the examiner or teacher to identify

the writer’s intended meaning as the sentence structures were atrocious.

Apart from that, another glaring issue would be the vocabulary. The confusion would be
more on using the correct words to indicate the right meaning or intention. For example,
some of my students could not differentiate the use of ‘look’, ‘see’ and ‘watch’. Thus, this
issue resulted in inaccurate description of a situation by the students. In addition, they were
also confused when they tried to use derivatives. The words ‘healthy’ and ‘healthiness’ are
derivatives of the word ‘healthy’. I noticed some of them could not use these words properly.
For instance, they would write ‘It is important to take care of our healthy.’ Thus, they should
be exposed to more words that are usually confused so that they would be aware of the
different function of each word.

Moreover, relative pronoun was another critical problem faced by my students. As some of
my students tried to do direct translation, their sentences were normally long. So, the
sentences became complex, and they normally missed the relative pronoun that was
required to complete their sentences appropriately. Although some of them did try to use
the relative pronoun in their sentences, they could not choose the right one. For instance,
‘Dawan, whom is a determined student, dreamed to go to the city school.’ Therefore, relative
pronoun should be taught to ensure clear understanding on how and when to use it.

INVESTIGATION

Based on my observations of the errors, I planned to conduct proper investigations. I took
the first step by planning to further investigate the problems faced in my students’ writing.
The investigations had two major levels, Level 1 and Level 2. The following headings will
describe more on my plans.

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Level 1

I decided on conducting a pre-test. It was conducted during the first examination season of

2020 on March. It was a directed writing test. The students were required to write a letter to

one of their friends and share information about a programme that they have attended.

Notes, consisting of 12 content points, were provided to assist students in writing.

The objectives of the pre-test were to determine students’ level of proficiency in writing a
letter including their ability to plan their writing and ability to construct sentences using
precise grammar. The skills required for my 5 Ibnu Sina to answer this question included
planning the writing, deciding the right tense to be used, constructing sentences correctly,
as well as using the right punctuation and spelling. Figure 1 is the actual question posed to
them as the pre-test.

Figure 1.
Pre-test Question

The pre-test scripts were then marked accordingly. In order for me to gather evidence for
the errors, I went through 3 simple steps as in Figure 2.

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Figure 2.

The 3 Steps

Identifying Classifying Prioritizing
the errors the errors

I marked their essays manually and utilized the marking rubric which was standardized for
SPM essay marking. Nevertheless, to identify the errors made by the students, I marked
once more and focused on their language performance including tenses, grammar and
vocabularies. Next, I categorized the errors identified into two colours, green and yellow.
The yellow code was for grammatical mistakes while the green code was for non-
grammatical errors. The errors were classified into two groups as I intended to know which
category needed more interventions. The last step was prioritization. This was done as I
need to give the right medications for my students’ problems in writing.

Word choice, sentence structure, tenses, spelling, preposition, verb, and articles were the
most common difficulties found in the students’ scripts. However, after I completed those
three steps mentioned above, I identified four top errors done by my students including parts
of speech, active and passive voice, tense as well as quantifiers and countable nouns.

It seemed that all seven analysed samples had an identical problem, which was word choice.
This indicated that they could not differentiate the use of some words. For instance, one of
the samples could not distinguish between health and healthy. This led me to focus on parts
of speech to ensure the students could select the right word to be used to form a meaningful
and correct sentence.

Besides, verb was the second highest mistake done by those samples. Most of the verb
related problems were caused by the students’ confusion on how and when to use active

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and/or passive voice sentences. Hence, I decided to clarify on the usage of active and

passive voice sentences so that the students would be able to construct those two types of

sentences correctly. Moreover, tense was the third issue in their writing. Almost all students

did not notice that they should be sharing information of a programme they attended. They

assumed that they have not attended the programme, so they used future tense. Thus, I

believed that I should focus on past tenses.

In addition, sentence structure was another problem needed to be solved. One of the major
mistakes under sentence structure was related to determiner, countable nouns, and
uncountable nouns. I reviewed on these three aspects to clear the misunderstanding on how
to pair them. In conclusion, parts of speech; active and passive voice sentences; past
tenses; as well as determiner, countable nouns, and uncountable nouns were top four
mistakes found to need interventions.

Level 2

I further detailed out my investigations by working on the intervention plan. It was a four-
week intervention plan and was conducted right after the Movement Control Order was lifted
and the school opened. The plan was conducted in the students’ classroom. It focused on
the top four errors identified such as:

1) parts of speech,
2) active and passive voice,
3) tense, as well as
4) quantifiers and countable nouns.

The Intervention Activities

My week 1 intervention focused on tenses. I hoped that my 5 Ibnu Sina would be able to
use past tense in suitable situation. In order to achieve my objective, I laid out the activities
into 4:

1) Awareness Raising Activity
2) Past Tense Memory Game
3) Mystery Box Game – Past Tense
4) Review

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The first activity was awareness raising activity, wherein I ensured the students to be able

to identify and rectify their mistakes in the pre-test. I took out several sentences from their

writing and asked them to find the mistakes in those sentences. Then, they needed to amend

those mistakes. Lastly, they had to point out the real problem, which was past tense. I

assisted them if they needed support.

The second activity was Past Tense Memory Game. I attached cards, in which the written
side was hidden, on the whiteboard. In this game, my students must try to find the matching
present tense and past tense verbs. To play, I divided the class into two teams. Then the
teams took turns in choosing two numbers. They clicked on the numbered squares to reveal
the verb below. If the two verbs were a matching pair (e.g. ‘go’ and ‘went’) then that team
received a point. If they were not matching (e.g. ‘go’ and ‘studied’) then I flipped both cards
back to the original position to hide the words again. The game continued until all pairs were
found and the winner was decided.

The third activity was Mystery Box Game (Past Tense). This game would
encourage students to make their own past tense sentences in a fun way. I distributed an
envelope consisting pieces of cut-out which had a present tense form of a
verb. Each student took one piece of paper from the envelope. To play, I divided the class
into two teams. The students would be given a minute to construct a correct past tense
sentence to answer to a question (What did you do last weekend?) The teams would then
take turns in answering the question (A team member for each turn). Then, if the team
member successfully answered the question, he must choose either to keep the box, or give
the box to the other team. Inside the box was either plus points (e.g. +1000) or minus points
(e.g. -1000). At the end of the game, the team with the most points was the winner.
The last activity of the week was review. The students reviewed the past tense verbs and
sentences from the lesson, and they were asked to write a complete sentence for each point
in the pre-test question.

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For the second week, the intervention I focused on was parts of speech. I hoped that my 5

Ibnu Sina would be able to use parts of speech correctly. In order to achieve my objective,

I laid out the activities into 4:

1) Awareness Raising Activity
2) Parts of Speech Review
3) Change-Arounds
4) Review

Awareness raising activity was the first activity of this week as well because I would like my
students to identify and rectify their mistakes they made in the pre-test before I started the
treatment. I took out several sentences from their writing and asked them to find the mistakes
in those sentences. Then, they were required to amend those mistakes. Lastly, they had to
point out the real problem, which was parts of speech. I assisted the students if they need
assistance.

The second activity was Parts of Speech Review. I showed a parts of speech poem to the
students. Then, I reviewed the parts of speech. After that, I gave an exercise and the
students identified the parts of speech of underlined words and also underlined the words
based on the parts of speech provided.

Besides, Change-Arounds was the third activity of the second intervention week. The
students had a ‘Parts of Speech’ word hunt in the essay they wrote and classified those
words into 8 parts of speech on a piece of paper. The teacher wrote a sentence on the
whiteboard (e.g. My cat likes to jump on our bed) and asked them to write it down on a sheet
of paper. They needed to change a part of the speech given by me to form a new complete
sentence. The students then gave the paper to the one on their right. The third and fourth
steps continued, and I could decide how many change-arounds could be made by
them. They could make up some humorous sentences doing change-arounds.

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Lastly, review was also the last activity for this week. I asked the students to create two

elaboration sentences for each main point sentence they wrote in previous lesson. This was

to confirm their understanding of the parts of speech.

On the third week of the intervention, I focused on active and passive voices. I hoped that

my 5 Ibnu Sina would be able to construct active and passive voice sentences correctly. In

order to achieve my objective, I laid out the activities into 4:

1) Awareness Raising Activity
2) Active and Passive Voice Review
3) Error Spotting
4) Review

The first activity was awareness raising activity. Again, I took out several sentences from
their writing and asked them to find the mistakes in those sentences. Then, they had to
amend those mistakes. Lastly, they were required to point out the real problems, which were
active and passive voice sentences. I assisted them if they need assistance. The second
activity was Active and Passive Voice Review. I reviewed active and passive voice in order
to activate their prior knowledge as they had studied this before.

The third activity was Error Spotting. The students read their pre-test essay and identified
the active and passive voice sentences. They wrote those sentences in the table I
provided. They then gave the table to the person on their right. They identified and amended
the mistake of a sentence and gave the table to the person on their right. It would be
repeated until all sentences written had been checked. The last activity was review. I asked
them to explain their understanding of the lesson and check the sentences they wrote from
previous lesson’s review.

The final intervention focused on countable nouns, uncountable nouns and quantifiers. I
hoped that my 5 Ibnu Sina would be able to identify countable and uncountable nouns for
each quantifier. To achieve my objective, I laid out the activities into 4:

1) Awareness Raising Activity
2) List Countable Nouns, Uncountable Nouns and Quantifiers
3) Chain Story Telling
4) Review

As usual awareness raising activity started the intervention of the week. I singled out several
sentences from their writing and requested them to identify the mistakes in those sentences.

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Then, they were required to amend those mistakes. Lastly, they had to point out the real
problems, which were quantifiers, countable nouns, and uncountable nouns. I supported
them if they needed assistance.
The second activity was Quantifiers, Countable Nouns, and Uncountable Nouns Listing. I
requested students to read their pre-test essay and categorize the nouns into countable or
uncountable noun in a table I prepared. The students categorized the quantifiers (for
countable nouns, uncountable nouns, or both) from their essay into the table. Then, they
swapped their list and read out aloud the list in their hand. They needed to identify and
amend the mistake.

In addition, Chain Story Telling was the third activity of the third intervention
week. Each student took a quantifier cut-out from an envelope. I informed them that they
need to tell their bucket list to another pupil using the quantifier for a minute. They then must
exchange the quantifier and find another pupil to talk to. For the second conversation, before
exchanging their bucket list, they needed to tell the bucket list of the person they last talked
to. The previous two steps would be repeated as I deemed necessary. Finally, the last
activity was a review. I asked several students to report to the class the interesting bucket
list they had learned about other people in the class.

THE RESPONSE

After the 4 weeks intervention plan, I needed to gauge how well my approach impacted the
students. Thus, I decided to carry out a post-test to ensure the success of the intervention.
I conducted the parallel question as the pre-test. Again, we were having the same objectives
in checking their level of proficiency, their ability to plan their writing and to construct
sentences. It was conducted to measure the implementation had done with them had given
some impacts.

The post-test utilized the same question as the pre-test. The students were given ample
time to answer as I provided time as much as allocated by the question. The students also
wrote the directed writing in an exam manner. The objectives of the pre-test were to
determine the students’ level of proficiency in writing a letter including their ability to plan
their writing and also ability to construct sentences using precise grammar. The skills

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required for the students to answer this question included planning the writing, deciding the
right tense to be used, constructing sentences correctly, as well as using the right
punctuation and spelling.

The analysis went through similar processes as pre-test where I conducted the error
identification, classification of the errors and lastly prioritizing them.

Figure 4.
Top Four Errors

Pre Test Post Test

Parts of Verb
Speech Word Choice

Active and
Passive Voice

Tense Spelling

Quantifiers Preposition
and countable

nouns

Based on the post-test data, new errors emerged: verb, preposition, word choice, spelling,
tenses, articles, and pronoun were the challenges the students had in post-test. The number
of grammatical challenges amplified from seven in pre-test to eight in post-test. Pronoun
was another addition to the group. Nonetheless, all four challenges that have been treated
during the execution of intervention plan, had shown a remarkable decrease in number of
total mistakes done by the students. For instance, out of 42 mistakes recorded for tenses in
pre-test, the number had been reduced to only seven in post-test. Word choice problems
also reduced to 46 from 84 errors recorded in pre-test. Besides that, there were only 10
sentence structure mistakes in post-test as compared to 25 mistakes in pre-test. However,
the students were still struggling to solve their verb related problems in writing.

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REFLECTIONS

The data collected signified that only three intervention plan activities; including parts of
speech, past tenses, as well as determiner, countable nouns, and uncountable nouns; were
effective in reducing the rate of mistakes done by the students in their writing. This might be
the case as my students gave positive feedback on this three intervention plan activities. I
believed the fun and meaningful activities conducted made them enjoyed the lesson and
eventually received better understanding that had led them to lessen the errors in the post-
test.

On the other hand, students had not mastered on constructing active and passive voice
sentences correctly. I noticed that since students are having problem with sentence
structure, I needed to relook and revisit active and passive voice activity in the intervention
plan. The error spotting activity might not be as effective as I thought it would be. Therefore,
I need to review and improvise my approach to add better and more effective activity for
sentence structure activities. This was because they would be able to improve their writing
tremendously if they were able to construct active and passive voice sentences correctly.

Moreover, I had to focus on the problems that had not been treated during the intervention
plan. The problems were preposition, articles, spelling, and pronoun. Overall, there was an
improvement on the students’ marks. Yet, this was not the end of treatment as there were
still many issues that needed attention by the teachers in order to assist the students in
writing.

In conclusion, this intervention plan had changed the students’ behaviour towards writing
because they were getting clear on their weaknesses and how to solve them. It would be
great for the intervention plan to be a continuous effort by me as the teacher. However, due
to limited time left for me to plan it, it is advisable for me to do one at a time or discuss it with
my colleagues.

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REFERENCES

Fareed, M., Ashraf, A., & Bilal, M. (2016). ESL learners’ writing skills: Problems, factors and
suggestions. Journal of Education and Social Sciences, 4(2), 81-92.
Ghabool, N., Mariadass, M. E., & Kashef, S. H. (2012). Investigating Malaysian ESL students’ writing problems
on conventions, punctuation, and language use at secondary school level. Journal of Studies in
Education, 2(3), 130-143.

Leki, I. (1992). ESL composing: Strategies and perceptions. In B. Leeds (Eds.), Writing in a Second Language:

Insights from First and Second Language Teaching and Research. Longman: Addison-Wesley.

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IMPROVING
WRITING THROUGH
ERROR-ANALYSIS

VALERIE UNDI
JAMALI MOHAMAD

SETTING

SMK Lutong is one of the oldest schools in Miri, built in 1963 and located nearby Lutong
beach. The landscape and designs of the buildings have not changed much over the years,
with the school area consisting of 18 blocks, a few of them 3-storeys high, and the rest 2 or
single-storeyed. The number of academic and non-academic staff is currently 148 while the
number of students from Remove class up to Upper Sixth form is 2238. There are 62 classes
altogether, and currently the school operates in two sessions, both morning and afternoon.
A new school building is under construction at the moment, and is estimated to be completed
and be utilised by May next year. A majority of the students are from families who come
from the lower to middle-socioeconomic background, with a range of monthly income from
RM400 to RM10,000 per household. Students whose families come from lower economic
status are those with parents or guardians who work as labourers, maintenance workers,
fishermen, and others. Meanwhile, those who come from the higher economic status are
those whose parents mostly work in the oil and gas industry, particularly higher-paying jobs
such as engineers, managers and operators. While there is a large number of parents who
work in professional fields like teachers and accountants, there are also some who manage
their own small businesses like restaurants or workshops. With a majority of students who
come from backgrounds and potential career paths in which English would be widely used
in the future, it is therefore necessary to equip them with sufficient language skills particularly
writing so that they can be fluent and proficient in the language.

Before the First Mid Term Break in March, the students were assigned to write an
argumentative essay titled ‘Social Media Influencers are the Best Role Models’. Prior to
writing this essay, students were taught the basic structure of an argumentative essay, for
example what constructs the Introduction, Body and Conclusion of the essay. Discussion
and brainstorming of main points for and against the statement were also discussed in class.
Students then submitted their essays during the school break via online.

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Based on the corrections done on the students’ essays, nearly 10 percent of them were
found to have consistently written sentences with errors related to Subject-Verb agreement.
The errors occurred most often in the beginning of every paragraph, especially in the body
of the essay where students would write the topic sentence to introduce the main idea for
the particular paragraph. This was rather apparent when the subject consisted of a noun
phrase, for example ‘One of the benefits of following influencers are…’, which was probably
caused by the students’ tendency to refer to the nearest noun as the subject instead of the
noun phrase. Hence, the problem that the students faced in relation to Subject-Verb
Agreement was due to their lack of awareness in identifying the noun phrase in the sentence.

The problem with using accurate relative pronouns in writing compound and complex
sentences is another concurrent issue in this situation. Out of 25 students, 12 of them were
found to have frequently misused the pronouns ‘which’ and ‘that’ instead of ‘who’ when
referring to a person or people as the subject in the sentence. It was found that the longer
sentences were, the more frequent the errors occurred. The complexity of the sentence
structure sometimes causes students to forget that the subject of the sentence is a person
or a group of people. This could most probably be due to the fact that they seldom use
subordinate clauses which begin with a variety of relative pronouns.

Next, another significant issue with the students’ essay was lack of supporting details for the
main ideas expressed in the body of the essay. Argumentative writing requires more
elaboration in terms of justifying one’s arguments or points with examples, facts, evidence,
or any other relevant information. Despite using the same main points which were discussed
earlier as a class, there were a few instances in the students’ work whereby they provided
little elaboration causing not only the essays to be shorter than the targeted length, but the
quality of the argument itself was weak and uninteresting. In some cases whereby the
students did manage to write the essay, but there was another issue with the relevance of
the supporting details, thus affecting the overall quality of the essay.

The final issue with the students’ essays was the lack of accuracy and precision in the choice
of vocabulary in the sentences. This is particularly evident in terms of using the wrong word
class to express the intended meaning in a sentence. For instance, in the sentence ‘These
group of people are influence (supposed to be ‘influential’)’, the word ‘influence’ is a noun,
and due to the student’s lack of awareness that the adjective should be written as ‘influential’,
this affects the accuracy of the sentence. Generally, the problem with accuracy in vocabulary
was caused by the students’ confusion or lack of awareness between the different word
classes, in this case, whether to use nouns or adjectives in a sentence.

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I have been teaching English for the upper forms (form 4 and form 5) for twelve years. I
could still remember clearly how I struggled during my first few years in trying to figure out
the most effective techniques or strategies to teach essay writing, particularly to low-
proficiency learners. However, it took me a while to realise that in my effort to help these
group of learners, I had sometimes overlooked or subconsciously neglected another group
of students, and they were those who came from the advanced or ‘front’ classes.
Nevertheless, years of teaching and marking students’ essays have helped me to gain a lot
of knowledge and experience not only in assessing students’ compositions, but in evaluating
the quality of students’ work, as well as identifying the common errors and rectifying the
problems by planning and implementing several programmes and activities to improve their
essays.

FOCUS

The students involved in the plan are from 5 Einstein, who are considered as advanced
learners based mostly on their academic performance. Hence, they are expected to be quite
proficient in the English language and any problems related to any of the four language skills
which are reading, writing, speaking and listening would be considered as minimal. A
majority of the students are expected to achieve at least A- (ETR) for the English 1119 Paper
in the upcoming SPM. However, there are a few whose English language proficiency are
not as good and scored at least grade C for English paper in the previous term exams.
These are students who face difficulty in constructing accurate sentence structures with
minimum grammar errors, and use simple or basic vocabulary in expressing their ideas in
writing. The data that is used for the intervention plan is mostly derived from this particular
group of students. Therefore, it is suffice to say that the students involved in the intervention
plan are advanced students whose English language proficiency are of the average level
and require an amount of support to address the specific areas or weaknesses especially in
writing essays.

INVESTIGATION

Level 1

The 1st level of the investigation started with a pre-test. There were three objectives of this
pre-test. First, students should be able to produce a minimum 350-word argumentative
essay using suitable format and register. Next, students should be able to construct a variety
of sentence structures comprising of simple, compound and complex sentences to introduce
and expand the main ideas presented in the essay. Finally, students should be able to use
accurate vocabulary to convey their purpose and ideas in the essay. In order to answer the
question, the students needed to have a few skills. First, students need to be able to
construct accurate sentences in terms of Subject-Verb Agreement. Next, students need to

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be able to write complex sentences using the correct relative pronouns in the subordinate
clauses. Then, students need to elaborate the main ideas by providing relevant and
sufficient supporting details to justify their arguments. Finally, students should use accurate
and concise vocabulary in their essays.



Based on the pre-test data, 4 types of errors which were categorised into 2 grammar and 2
non-grammar errors were identified for the purpose of designing the intervention.

First, it was found the students sometimes wrote sentences which were inaccurate in terms
of Subject-verb Agreement, especially if the subject of the sentence was formed by a noun
phrase. The students were probably confused or overlooked that the subject in the sentence
was not necessarily the noun placed right before the verb. For instance, in the sentence
‘One of the advantages of following social media influencers are…’, the subject was ONE
out of many other advantages, but because the word ‘influencers’ was written right before
the auxiliary verb ‘are’, most of the time students used plural form right after the plural noun.

Next, students occasionally used incorrect relative pronouns in the subordinate clauses
when writing complex sentences. The most common error was using ‘that’ or ‘which’ when
they were actually referring to a person or a group of people in the main clause. For example,
in the sentence ‘Famous celebrities and artists will be good role models to their viewers that
look up to them in various aspects…’, the relative pronoun ‘that’ should have been replaced
with ‘who’ as it refers to a group of people. Then, there were some students whose essays
were less impressive or persuasive due to lack of quality and quantity of elaboration. These
students would write only two or three sentences to support their main ideas, but these
sentences were repetitive, irrelevant, or too simple. This affected the allocation of marks
awarded to them in terms of the quality of their arguments in the essay.

Finally, a few students used inaccurate vocabulary in their essay, which most of the time
were caused by the confusion between the different word classes. For instance, in the
sentence ‘Their followers will keep themselves update with the influencers’ daily activities’,
the word ‘update’ is a noun, and should be written as ‘updated’ instead, which was an
adjective. There were a few other instances, for words like ‘determine’ (supposed to be
‘determined’), ‘effective’ (supposed to be ‘efficient’). Therefore, it was necessary to address
this weakness by getting students to familiarise themselves with the main word classes and
their functions in sentences to avoid the same mistakes to be repeated in the future.

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Figure 1.
Percentage of Marks for the Pre-Test (Full mark: 50 marks)

Level 2

Level 2 involved with me deciding upon the suitable interventions for my students. A four-
week intervention plan was designed to address the four gaps of skills and knowledge
identified from the students’ essays during the pre-test, which were Subject-verb Agreement,
Relative Pronouns, Elaborations and Supporting Details, and Vocabulary (Word classes).

In Week 1, the topic addressed was Subject-Verb Agreement. The lesson started with
gauging students’ attention to the basic rules of Subject-Verb agreement by getting them to
complete three statements about the rules with the correct words or phrases. Students then
were shown 5 examples of sentences with errors in Subject-Verb agreement which were
found from their peers’ essays. This helped them to relate the rules which were discussed
earlier with the errors in the sentences, and they then did the corrections to the sentences.
The main activity was matching a group of jumbled up sentence strips which consisted of
two parts of a sentence to form a complete sentence. These sentences were then used as
the topic sentence for the essay titled ‘The Roles of Technology in Education’. The students
worked together to complete a short essay within the time given and gave feedbacks to the
other group’s essays.

In Week 2, the focused skill or gap was writing sentences with relative clauses using relative
pronouns such as ‘who’, ‘that’, ‘which’, and others. In the beginning, students matched 8
main clauses with the suitable subordinate or relative clauses in order to enhance their ability
to use the accurate relative pronouns when constructing complex sentences. Students then
used various relative pronouns when writing a short descriptive essay based on a group of
pictures as stimulus. Further practice on using relative pronouns was done by getting the
students to provide other alternatives or suggestions for the relative clauses written by their
classmates earlier. Feedback on accuracy of sentences and creativity of ideas was given
by the end of the lesson.

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Week 3 focused on enhancing students’ ability in elaborating or expanding main ideas in a

WEEK THREE: Elaborating Main Ideas

The lesson started with the teacher showing 3 samples of students’ argumentative essays
which scored 42 to 50 marks for Section B, which belonged to Higher B and A bands. The
purpose was to show students how the arguments were supported with convincing and
relevant elaborations, and further enhanced with precise vocabulary and accurate sentence
structures, which fulfilled the criteria of the higher bands in the marking scheme. The teacher
also asked the students to refer to their own essays during pre-test (essay titled ‘Social
Influencers are the Best Role Models in Today’s World’) and reflect on what aspects they
needed to focus on in order to improve in the next writing activity or when writing
argumentative essays in the future. This activity was conducted for 15 minutes.

In the next activity, the students worked in pairs to analyse 3 paragraphs and identify the
main ideas and supporting details. The pairs were selected randomly to share their findings
and after further explanation by the teacher, the students then proceeded with categorising
a group of sentences into main ideas and supporting details. This activity took 25 minutes
to be completed.

The writing task was done as a group in which the students were assigned to write a short
paragraph using one of the main points discussed for the topic ‘Students should be allowed
to bring mobile phones to school’. They used the notes from the writing module provided to
write convincing and relevant supporting details. The students completed their group’s
paragraph within 20 minutes.

The final activity was peer evaluation, whereby students gave feedback to the other groups’
essays by stating their strengths, and how they could improvise their paragraphs using the
‘2 Stars, 1 Wish’ activity.

WEEK FOUR: Using Precise Vocabulary

In the first part of the lesson, I showed the common errors in terms of vocabulary (confusion
between word classes) found from the students’ essays. Next, I explained why the words
were inaccurate, and how the different word classes serve different purposes in a sentence
or the context of an essay. This activity took 10 minutes.

In the next activity, students worked in their groups to create an infographic based on the
materials they found online, or from grammar reference books to demonstrate the functions

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and examples of how the word classes are used in sentences. In addition to this, the
students also created a short activity, such as sentence completion, word re-order to form
accurate sentences, and identifying words in a short passage. Students spent 40 minutes
to complete this task.

Then, students moved from one group to another (3 Stray, 1 Stay) to view their friends’ work
and participate in the activities prepared. They later provided their feedback on the other
group’s product by stating their strengths and what would have made their infographic or
activities better. Another 20 minutes were spent on this session.

Finally, students worked together to analyse 3 texts and identify the errors related to word
class by circling or underlining them in the texts. Students shared their findings using the
visualizer and the teacher facilitated the discussion by asking questions to allow the students
to justify and provide the suitable answers to replace the mistakes.

THE RESPONSE

A post-test question on ‘Digital Learning: Benefits, Challenges and Opportunities” was
conducted. I hoped that my students should be able to produce a minimum 350-word
argumentative essay using suitable format and register. Next, students should be able to
construct a variety of sentence structures consisting of simple, compound, and complex
sentences to introduce and expand the main ideas presented in the essay. Finally, students
should be able to use accurate vocabulary to convey their purpose and ideas in the essay.

To answer the question, the students needed to have a few skills. First, students need to be
able to construct accurate sentences in terms of Subject-Verb Agreement. Next, students
need to be able to write complex sentences using the correct relative pronouns in the
subordinate clauses. Then, students need to elaborate the main ideas by providing relevant
and sufficient supporting details to justify their arguments. Finally, students should use
accurate and concise vocabulary in their essays.

Figure 2.
Results for the Post-Test

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Figure 3.
Percentage of Marks for the Post-Test

REFLECTION

Out of the 14 students, 8 of them had an increase in their post-test essay marks. 5 of them
scored lower marks, though not much less than their pre-test, which was around 2 or 3
marks difference. Only one student scored the same mark for both tests.

Generally, most of the students had improved in their writing, particularly in terms of Subject-
Verb Agreement in their sentence structures. Apart from that, it was observed that they were
more careful and more aware when writing sentences that contain relative clauses. There
were fewer occasions where they used inaccurate relative pronouns when writing relative
clauses. Another significant improvement was in the way the students wrote their supporting
details in elaborating the main ideas or points for the post-test. The examples they provided
were more extensive, yet still relevant. This proves that proper planning was put into their
writing as well as determining the relevance of the points were done quite well after the
activities done during the intervention plan.

Finally, though some of the students improved in the three skills addressed in the
intervention plan, a few of them still faced problems when it comes to vocabulary, particularly
in differentiating the word classes in their sentences. However, this was probably since not
much time was spent on each word class that was assigned to the class. Therefore, with
more exercises and activities for each of the word classes that were identified, the students
might have been able to improve more in their essay writing.

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REFLECTION

Though much planning and consideration were taken in carrying out the activities and
lessons throughout the 4-week intervention plan, there were still some areas that could be
improved. First, the grouping of the students could have been done differently by ensuring
that each group consists of mixed-ability students. The reason why only 14 students were
involved in this plan was that due to the Post-Covid 19 SOP, the initial number of the class
which was 29 students was reduced to half. Hence, there was not much opportunity for the
students to work with different people, and of different levels of proficiency. Perhaps if all
the 29 students which include those of whose English proficiency are more advanced than
the rest participated, they would have provided more support in the group activities.

Next, the activities which were conducted in the class could have been complemented with
more enrichment exercises which would in turn enhance students’ understanding and
knowledge of the skills learned during the lessons. Perhaps if they were given some
homework or quizzes to do it would have helped them to be familiar and know how to write
sentence structures that contain less grammatical or non-grammatical errors. Consequently,
they would be able to produce argumentative or discussion essays that are of better quality
and more impressive.

Significance of error analysis in teaching pedagogy

The significance of this intervention is that it would not only improve the students’ writing
skills, but also to familiarise them with the practice of constantly being aware of the common
or most frequent mistakes that occur when writing any type of essay. As they progress
through the various stages of activities throughout the 4-week plan, they would be able to
relate their previous or lack of knowledge on the targeted grammatical or non-grammatical
items, and therefore could improvise their writing. Whereas for the subject teacher,
integrating error-analysis as part of the teaching and learning process would allow the
teacher to constantly be reflective and analytical towards his or her teaching methods, which
is essential as an educator. Therefore, it is hoped that this intervention plan would be helpful
to both the teacher and the students, as well as be used as an encouragement to other
teachers to make error analysis a common practice in their classes.

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Appendices

WORKSHEETS

Week 1 (Subject –Verb Agreement)

Task: Match the subjects of the sentences in the pink strips (Column A) with the predicate in the
blue strips (Column B). Check that the verb in the blue strip (Column B) agrees with the subject when
you match them.

AB

Doing research for one’s is made easier and more convenient with technology.
studies

Teachers improve the quality of their teaching through using technology
to evaluate their lessons.

Collaborative learning is conducted more effectively using technology.

With technology, those are able to gain access to education with equal opportunities

with special needs like the rest.

Technology allows students to be more creative and innovative.

Students’ work is produced in a better quality with the assistance of
technology.

Analysing and are done much faster and efficiently.

synthesising information

using technology

Technology makes learning less stressful and more meaningful.

*The sentences are then used as topic sentences or main ideas to write an essay titled ‘Roles of
Technology in Education’

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Week 2 (Relative Clauses)

Task 1: Match the main clauses with the correct relative clauses in the table below.

Task 2: Write a descriptive essay of an event using the pictures that your group has collected.
In your essay, make sure that you use the relative pronouns used in Task 1 (or any other suitable
pronouns). Underline the relative clauses in your sentences.
Week 3 (Supporting Details and elaborations)
Task 1 : Write down the Main Point and the supporting details by analysing the paragraphs
given.

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Task 2: Identify which supporting details are considered as relevant by writing down the
sentence numbers under each point.

Retrieved from :
https://www.townsendpress.com/sites/default/files/tinymce/writing%20and%20motvn/RWC_chapter
4.pdf

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Week 4 : Vocabulary (Word Classes)

Task : Using the sample below, create an infographic for the word class you group has been
assigned to. Then, create an activity for your classmates to test their knowledge about the word
class.

Source:http://www.k-3teacherresources.com/parts-of-speech-posters.html#.UV1Tr1dVY35

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Acknowledgements
The success and outcome of this book were possible by the contributions and dedications from many
people. First, our sincere thanks go to the participants of the Program Peningkatan Kemahiran Bahasa
Inggeris di Sekolah (PPKBIS) who are also the authors of this book for their contributions in the pro-
duction of the book. We would like to express our deepest gratitude to all the 27 SISC+ officers who
have provided the constructive online coaching and the mentoring sessions to the participants of the
PPKBIS 2020 until this book project becomes a reality. We are also grateful to the Director of English
Language Teaching Centre (ELTC), Puan Farah Mardhy binti Aman, for the trust given in producing this
book. Finally, we would like to thank the Ministry of Education for the fund provided in bringing out
this book for the readers.

Dr. Khairul Aini Mohamed Jiri
Dr. Rashidah binti Rahamat

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Notes / Remarks

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Notes / Remarks





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