Kementerian Pelajaran Malaysia

IPG KAMPUS TUANKU BAINUN, 14000 BUKIT MERTAJAM, PULAU PINANG.

TEACHING WRITING SKILLS IN THE PRIMARY ESL CLASSROOM

(TSL 3107)

NAME IC NUMBER CLASS / GROUP COURSE NAME

: AIMI SYAFIQAH BINTI SERBA JALIL : 921118-06-5560 : 4 PISMP TESL 1/ SN : TEACHING WRITING SKILLS IN THE PRIMARY ESL CLASSROOM : TSL 3107

COURSE CODE

LECTURERS NAME : MR. TARSAME SINGH A/L MASA SINGH DUE DATE : 23RD AUGUST 2013

DECLARATION
I certify that the attached work is entirely my own, except where material quoted or paraphrased is acknowledged in the text. I also certify that it has not been submitted in any other unit or course.

Signed Name Date

: : AIMI SYAFIQAH BINTI SERBA JALIL : 23RD AUGUST 2013

WRITTEN REFLECTION NAME: AIMI SYAFIQAH BINTI SERBA JALIL CLASS: 4 PISMP TESL 1/ SN Based on the project that I have done, which was about the three approaches and techniques of teaching writing skill in ESL primary classroom which are Product, Process and Genre based approach, they were various experiences and knowledge that I could learn. These knowledge and experiences could be used to improve my teaching skills in the future and prepare me with various approaches that can be used to suit the text genre, teacher and students. I am glad and grateful with such opportunity that allows me to complete the task or project with other classmates. The task that I have been assigned to was macro teaching where I need to conduct a lesson using one of the stages in my lesson plan. There were several challenges that I faced in completing this tasks which were to devise a good activities and materials that suit the approach chosen in Task 2. As I have chosen Genre Approach, there were several activities that I had taken into considerations. However, the problem comes when I did not know how to prepare the activities materials so that it becomes more interesting. As I had chosen the production stage, I need to conduct two activities which were Mini Picture Book activity and Lets Cook recipe activity. It took a lot of time as I have minimal reference in and I did ask some of my friends opinions but they also lack of ideas on how to prepare a good activity session. However, the problem was able to be solved by referring to books and internet. Besides that, I also face few challenges where the recipe that I found was a bit complicated and hard for Year 5 students to comprehend. Thus, I need to do some adaptation and changes to suit the students language proficiency. Some words or phrase need to be deleted as it was too difficult for students to comprehend. Even though, various recipes were available online, but I still found it was hard to delete few words and construct the sentence in my own words. This was mainly because of limited

vocabulary acquisition. Thus, I tried to overcome this problem by referring to dictionary. However, I still managed to prepare the worksheet even though it took a lot of time. In addition, other weakness that I have found was the activities prepared were too dull and not interesting. I learnt that in order to have fun and interesting classroom learning, the teacher need to think about the needs of the young children who love something that related to their current life. Young children who born in era where their daily life occupied of technology, might prefer something related to the usage of computer, LCD, gadgets or IT. Thus, the suggestion that I have received were the Letter To a Friend activity can be replaced by asking the students to write an e -mail to their friends and for Dear Diary activity can be improved by providing attractive template. I learnt that as a teacher we need to be flexible and always keep u[dated with what the students like and dislike and their current trends in order to create a fun and meaningful classroom environment. Furthermore, there was also various knowledge that I am able to gain. As I learnt about each activities advantage and disadvantage, I am able to determine which activities were suitable to use in particular situation. This is very important as I will face various classroom situations in the future and to be a competent teacher, I need to prepare the activities thoughtfully. The students might love hands-on activities that involve a lot of actions and they can do by themselves. If the teacher be too rigid by focusing one particular skill without integrating any other skills, students will find the lesson too bored and they will have short attention span. Thus, I learnt that it is better to integrate other skill so that students can learn to use all the skills at the same time. In the nutshell, if I have given another chance, I would love to devise another activities and materials using other two approaches which were product and process approach. In future, I hope that I will be given such project or task for the next coursework as it really helps in building my teaching career. This task also helps to improve my language acquisition as I am able to learn various new vocabulary.