KEMENTERIAN PELAJARAN MALAYSIA Bahagian Perancangan dan Penyelidikan Dasar Pendidikan

ACTION RESEARCH PROPOSAL

IMPROVING THE SKILLS OF WRITING SIMPLE SENTENCES THROUGH THE METHOD OF VOS

Prepared by:

Catherine Teo Pey Pey Lim Phei Sam Neo Ai Geok Ong Lee Ming Wong Teck Shian

SJKC SOON CHENG LOT 1206, Jalan Parit Setongkat Darat, Sungai Terap, 84000, Muar, Johor.

FEBRUARY 2009

1.0 Title Improving the skills of writing simple sentences through method of vos

2.0 Researchers Catherine Teo Pey Pey Lim Phei Sam Neo Ai Geok Ong Lee Ming Wong Teck Shian

3.0 School SJKC SOON CHENG LOT 1206, Jalan Parit Setongkat Darat, Sungai Terap, 84000, Muar, Johor

4.0

Reflection on Previous Teaching and Learning I have been teaching Phase 2 English since I started my teaching career. From my observation, writing is a very complex skill to get my target group to master it. Therefore, most of my target group found it is difficult to construct correct sentences in their monthly test, examination even in their daily homework. The problems among my students are having tenses errors in sentence constructions, having problems to add and use new words including adjectives and adverbs appropriately and creatively, having difficulties to show variety in sentence patterns and structures, having a number of single word errors in use of conjunctions, prepositions and subject-verb-agreement, having unclear, incoherent sentence structures and sometimes with total distortion, little or no meaning. Based on those factors, I need to do some improvements to my target group and make sure that they will construct their own simple sentences without guidance anymore. The weaker students will earn more how to create their own sentences meanwhile the good students will produce more quality sentences in future.

5.0

Research Focus
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This research is focusing on the writing skills from constructing simple sentences to compound and complex sentences. So, I decided to expose and introduce "Improving The Skills of Writing Simple Sentences Through "VOS" to my target group.

6.0

Research Objectives: 6.1 General Objectives To improve the writing skills of writing simple sentences of the students.

6.2

Specific Objectives i. To propose a technique of teaching to reduce the problem of writing simple sentences among the students.
ii. To assist the weaker students in constructing simple sentences. iii. To improve and increase the percentage of passes in 2011 UPSR

English paper. 7.0 Target Group The target group consists of 14 students from Skim Baucar Tuisyen Year 4. This group of students is a weak language proficiency group. One of their main problems is to construct correct sentences. 8.0 Suggested Action Implementation 8.1 Problem Observation 8.1.1 Observation I made observation on pupils during teaching and learning session. This target group was evaluated during marking their exercises book, homework and pre-test.

8.1.2

Pre-Test The pre-test are used to examine how far the 14 students from my target group had mastered in writing skills. This pre-test will be done before the action plan and pupils have to answer in the question papers.

8.2 Suggested Action There were 3 activities planned to implement the action research on improving the students' writing skills through VOS method

8.2.1

Implementation of Activity One: Increasing vocabulary (VO) I will begin the research by advocating the explicit teaching of grammar for the learners such as introducing the vocabulary that are suggested by the syllabus books from Year 1 up to Year 4. A small booklet was given to each student. List of words with blanks to be filled in with the meanings of the words in Chinese are provided. The topics include buildings and places, numbers, food, occupations, sounds, plants, animals, synonyms, antonyms, colours, shapes, flowers, vegetables, fruits, places, things, materials for buildings, locations, directions etc.

8.2.2

Implementation of the Activity Two: Constructing and writing simple Sentences(S) After I have completed providing the students with the appropriate vocabulary in order to assist them in writing, I need to teach the students to write simple sentences if their performance in writing do not show a vast improvement. Therefore, they need more practice in constructing simple sentences. Simple sentences are the basic sentence patterns that the students should know in order to start writing. A booklet with ten blank lines were given to the students. The students
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were required to write ten simple sentences everyday. Basic simple sentences are taught to the students until they really understand to write the sentences themselves.

8.2.3

Implementation of Activity Three : Writing graded pictorial sentences In the third activity, I have decided to help the students by giving them the graded pictorial exercises. I have prepared 5 exercises of 3 levels of difficulties ranging from simple to difficult. The objective of giving these exercises is to guide them in writing in a more proper way by considering not only the grammar rules, variety of sentence patterns used but also the flow of the writing. This is to guide the students to write not only to pass but also to score as higher band as they could in the examination. 4 sets of exercises were given to the students. Each set consists of 3 levels of difficulties from simple or the easiest part to more difficult. After each exercise, post morte is done and the teacher then helps the students who still have problem in producing good writing exercises. The teacher explains on any parts that the students have problem in and after that they will have to do the corrections in their exercise books. These processes went on until the whole 5 exercises were completed and it took about 3 week s to complete all the exercises.

9.0 Schedule To Conduct The Research Changes will be applied to the planned activities if necessary. No. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. Activities Collect data and identify the target group Write the proposal of the research Planning on action implementation (individual/ Panel of English) Conduct the research - Pre-test Discuss the problems that arise in the pre-test(in panels discussion) Implementation o of Activity 1 Implementation o of Activity 2 Implementation o of Activity 3 Post-test Reflection on the Research Write the report Complete the report and pass up to PPD Dates 11 Feb 2009 12 Feb 2009 14 Feb 2009 27 Feb 2009 3 Mar 2009 27 Mar 2009 3 Apr 2009 10 Apr 2009 17 Apr 2009 20 Apr 2009 22 Apr 2009 11 May 2009

10.0 Cost for Conducting the Research

No. 1. 2. 3. 4. A4 Paper

Materials

Quantity Price( per unit) 1 RM 9.00 14 RM 0.70

Total RM 9.00 RM 9.80 RM50.00 RM10.00 RM78.80

Small Booklet Student Worksheets(Photostate) Report (Photostate)

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