CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

1.1

Introduction

Classroom writing is viewed primarily as social and cultural practice whereby

development through interaction and dialogue with others precedes individual
development. Motivation is an essential component of successful language
acquisition and I believe that successfully changing pupils negative attitude towards
English Language Writing lessons is one of the most crucial skills that I as a teacher
has to bring into the classroom. According to Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky (18961934), psychologist of the early Russian Soviet period, language is learned in
interaction and develops its meanings in human interaction.

Based on Vygotskys theory, I have chosen the teaching approach of guided writing
as an effective way to support pupils who are experiencing difficulties in writing,
including those who lack confidence or motivation. I believe, within the supportive
environment of guided writing sessions, pupils participate in activities which entail
the use of cognitive and communicative functions and by doing so, these functions
scaffold and nurture them in their developmental process. Hence in language
classrooms successful instructions cannot be an individuals unmediated or
unassisted effort but a collaborative process.

In this action research I had implemented the use of guided writing to teach writing in
my English Language class. In this chapter, I will discuss the context of my study, the
focus of my action research, the purpose and the objectives of the study.

1.2

Context of the Study

Learning to write is uniquely challenging and has always been a difficult task for
English Language Teaching (ELT) practitioners in Malaysia. Writing is such an
important learning tool because it helps students to understand ideas and concepts
better (Voon Foo, 2007, p. 4). Therefore, realising the importance of writing
Malaysian policy makers have decided to emphasize it in their mainstream courses.

In the Malaysian primary schools, pupils are taught the elements of writing starting
from the very basic which is from the formation of letters, to organising their ideas, to
using correct grammar, punctuation and spelling. Pupils are also expected to
advance from learning the rules of writing to automatically applying those rules. By
the end of Year 6, pupils should be able to write independently and produce multipleparagraph essays.

I have been teaching upper primary classes in three schools for the last twelve years
of my service. I am currently teaching a Year 6 class at my third school which is
located in Miri. This class consists of 12 pupils; 6 boys and 6 girls. I have been
teaching the same class and pupils since they were in Year 4. Ideally, pupils writing
abilities should improve in stages as they build upon the skills learned in previous
years.

From my experience of teaching them writing, I found out that poor mastery of the
English Language sentence structure (subject, verb and agreement or SVO) is one
of the main problems affecting the pupils ability to write sentences. This causes
hinders the low proficiency pupils from the ability to construct sentences correctly
and continue to perform badly. This also hinder them from participating actively in the
teaching and learning process especially in English Writing lessons. According to

Leki (1992), due to low proficiency, pupils can get very disappointed with their
difficulties in understanding word implication and meaning. It is obvious that there is
a great difference between writing in Bahasa Malaysia, as the first language and in
English as the second language.

In short, due to lack of motivation, the pupils continue to exhibit errors in their writing
for a number of social reasons such as showing negative behaviours toward the
learning of the English Language particularly in English Language Writing lessons.
This include being a passive learner. Passive learners are not active learners. They
do not actively look for or make connections between what they already know and
what theyre currently learning. When presented with a writing task, they do not
implement strategies or activate previous knowledge to complete a writing task. This
could also lead to continued lack of progress in ESL especially in writing. Pupils who
continued to experience failure in examinations or perform badly in writing tasks or
practices, will almost surely resulting in their reticence to try something new and
reliance on others to help them.

One of the skills that I as a teacher can bring into the classroom is that of
successfully motivating my pupils in order to changer their bahaviour towards
English Language Writing lessons. Therefore, it is important for me to take an active
role in trying to motivate and improve the behaviour of my pupils through guided
writing approach. I know from my teaching experience that a highly motivated group
of pupils is usually going to be easier to teach. So I am the one responsible for
creating the right motivational environment for my pupils to have positive learning in
order to grow and develop their knowledge of the language.

Through my training, I learned that one of the approaches of teaching writing to

primary school pupils is to teach over a series of scaffolded stages. The concept of
scaffolding was coined by Jerome Bruner, a psychologist noted for his contributions
in the field of educational psychology. It was based on the work of Lev Semyonovich
Vygotsky (1896-1934), a Russian psychologist, who proposed that with an adult's

assistance, children could accomplish tasks that they ordinarily could not perform
independently.

When my pupils are learning new or difficult tasks, they are given more assistance.
As they begin to demonstrate task mastery, the assistance or support is decreased
gradually in order to shift the responsibility for learning from me, as the teacher to the
pupils themselves. Thus, as the pupils assume more responsibility for their learning,
I, as the teacher will provide less support.

There are 4 developmental stages of writing. The stages are modelled writing,
guided writing, guided writing and independent writing. These stages of teaching
good writing is a gradual release from teacher-directed to complete independence. It
is tightly controlled to ensure success.

In this research, I had used guided writing to improve my pupils ability to construct
sentences. Guided writing is an instructional approach to teach writing to pupils by
writing with them. The general idea is to teach writing through writing. It involves the
teacher and a group of pupils working together to plan and construct sentences or a
composition.

I believe that guided writing ultimate goal is to get the pupils motivated to write more,
write better and finally to write independently. It also reinforces and supports writing
as well as reading. This approach also make it possible for the pupils to participate
actively in the learning process. Close examination of words and the demonstration
of the conventions of writing, spelling, punctuation and grammar help build
motivation and increase pupils confidence level. Thus, pupils will be able to
internalise learning better, resulting in better cognitive development and better writing
proficiency.

1.3

Focus of the Study

Given the problems faced by low proficiency pupils in writing, I have decided to use
guided writing approach in order to improve my pupils English Language writing
skills. This teaching approach would possibly help my Year 6 pupils especially the 5
low proficiency pupils in constructing sentences.

The second focus of this investigation is to improve pupils interest in writing. This will
involve pupils changing their learning behaviour by supporting pupils who are
experiencing difficulties in writing, including those who lack confidence or motivation.
I believe, within the supportive environment of guided writing sessions, pupils
participate in activities which entail the use of cognitive and communicative functions
and by doing so, these functions scaffold and nurture them in their developmental
process.

The third focus of my investigation is to improve my own teaching practice methods,

skills and knowledge in teaching English Language writing. Through guided writing,
pupils are also taught the correct English Language structure in order to be able to
construct good, correct and meaningful sentences. I believed that using guided
writing approach in teaching writing could contribute much in helping pupils to
improve their writing skills as they are able to construct sentences in the correct
order of the English Language structure which is subject, verb and followed by
Object (SV).

Remembering and mastering the correct order of the English Language sentence
structure is important in order for the pupils to be able to construct sentences. Hence
I believe that by mastering this structure, pupils are able to construct correct and
better sentences.

In order to see the effect guided writing upon the low proficiency pupils ability to
construct sentences, I have decided to administer an initial survey through a pre-test.
The test requires all 12 pupils in Year 6 to construct at least 5 simple sentences
based on a picture stimulus and 5 aiding words. The test item is modelled after
Section A, Ujian Penilaian Sekolah Rendah (UPSR) English Language Paper II
(014/2) question. The test item is appended in Appendix A.
From the initial survey, I found out that 5 out of 12 pupils could not achieve at least 4
out of 10 marks allocated for this test. Upon closer examination, I found out that
these 5 pupils could not construct sentences in the correct English Language
structure which comes in the order as follows; subject, verb and object (SVO).Table
1.1 below shows the score acquired by Year 6 pupils in my initial survey in.

Table 1.1 Year 6 Pupils Initial survey (pre-test) scores

Pupils
Pupil 1
Pupil 2
Pupil 3
Pupil 4
Pupil 5
Pupil 6
Pupil 7
Pupil 8
Pupil 9
Pupil 10
Pupil 11
Pupil 12
Maximum score
Minimum score

Score
2
2
1
1
0
4
4
4
5
5
7
8
8
0

In Table 1.1, we can see clearly that Pupil1, Pupil 2, Pupil 3, Pupil 4 and Pupil 5 were
unable to achieve the minimum score of 4 out of 10 marks that I have set for them.
Based on this result I found that the most prominent problems encountered by the
pupils was lacked in sentence structure and vocabulary mastery.

I have also used a behavioural checklist upon the five low proficiency pupils at this
initial survey stage as to provide

feedback of pupils attitude towards English

Language Writing lessons. The items are appended as in Appendix B. Table 1.2
below describes the behavioural observation and the frequency count for each
observation. The detail of the data in my second initial survey is appended in
appendix C.

Items
(1) I love English.

PUPILS BEHAVIOUR
Yes
No
I Dont Know
2
3
0

(2) I am interested to learn English.

(3) I participate actively in English class.

(4) I like writing.

(5) I think constructing five sentences is

easy.

(6) Learning to write through guided

writing helped me improving my
writing skills.

Table 1.2 Pupils behavioural checklist in my second initial survey

From Table 1.2, it is interpreted that:

Item 1 : 2 pupils answered Yes and 3 pupils answered No. Majority of the 5 low
proficiency pupils dont like English Language.

Item 2 : 3 pupils answered Yes and 2 pupils answered No. Majority of the 5
low proficiency pupils are interested to learn the English Language.

Item 3 : 1 pupil answered Yes and 4 pupils answered No.

Majority of the pupils do not participate actively the teaching and learning
process of the English Language Writing lessons.

Item 4 : None of the pupil answered Yes and 5 pupils answered No. All of the low
proficiency pupils dislike writing.

Item 5 : 1 pupil answered Yes and 4 pupils answered No. Most of the pupils think
that constructing 5 sentences are difficult.

Item 6 : 1 pupil answered Yes and 4 pupils answered No. Most of the pupils
show that using guided writing approach does not improve their ability to
improve their writing skills.

From the second initial survey, I found that majority of the low proficiency pupils
showed their interest to learn the English Language. Their low proficiency level might
hinder their ability to construct at least 5 simple sentences correctly, however they
show their interest to learn the language by participating in the learning activities and
completing the writing tasks given within the time given. However, the pupils
continue to exhibit errors in their writing for a number of social reasons such as

showing negative behaviours toward the learning of the English Language

particularly in English Language Writing lessons. This include being a passive
learner.

The danger with passive learners is they do not actively look for or make
connections between what they already know and what theyre currently learning.
When presented with a writing task, they do not implement strategies or activate
previous knowledge to complete a writing task. This led to continued lack of progress
in ESL especially in writing. Pupils who continued to experience failure in
examinations or perform badly in writing tasks or practices, will almost surely
resulting in their reticence to try something new and reliance on others to help them.

Based on the problems stated above, I aim to improve the pupils writing skills
through guided writing approach because it can make them write easily, and also
practice to write is the best way to learn writing. Furthermore, guided writing is a
teaching approach that can be used to help pupils to construct sentences during
writing lessons. This approach involves me as the teacher: guiding my pupils to
construct sentences either in groups or individually; responding to pupils attempts;
and extending pupils' thinking during the process.

Through guided writing approach, I involve myself as the teacher and the 5 low
proficiency pupils in working together to plan and construct sentences. I
demonstrate and talk through the process of constructing sentences and give explicit
instructions in how to use the writing strategies effectively. The pupils contribute their
ideas as well, as the sentences are constructed. Just as in shared writing, I ask the
pupils to sit together as a group in order to develop a sense of community and
enabled them to discuss the sentences in a collaborative way.

In guided writing approach, I select and use a range of instructional strategies.

During the lesson, I model and explained how the pupils are able to link and
sequence words and phrases into simple sentences. I also prompt the pupils in order
to reinforce their awareness of the English Language sentence structure.

Guided writing is also useful for a range of teaching purposes. It allows pupils to
consider the purpose of writing and create awareness of grammatical and structural
errors. It also allows pupils to focus on conventions such as spelling, punctuation
and handwriting. It is also used to encourage the pupils to revise and edit their
writing.

1.4

Purpose of the Study

1.4.1 Purpose

The primary purpose of the study was to use guided writing approach to help pupils
to improve their English Language writing skills to increase their interest to write. The
secondary purpose of the study was to improve my teaching practice methods, skills
and knowledge in teaching English Language Writing.
1.4.2 Objectives

1)

Using guided writing to improve pupils skills in English Language writing.

2)

To increase pupils interest to learn writing.

3)

To improve my teaching practice methods, skills and knowledge in teaching

English Language writing so that I can improve the pupils score in Section A,
UPSR English Language Paper II (014/2)

4)

To evaluate pupils reaction to the use of guided writing approach in English

language writing.

1.4.3

Research Questions

In relation to the objectives of my research, my key questions in this study are:

1)

Does guided writing approach improve Year 6 pupils achievement in English

Language writing?

2)

Does guided writing increase pupils interest to learn writing?

3)

Does the use of guided writing approach improve my teaching practice

methods, skills and knowledge in teaching English Language writing?

4)

How does the use of guided writing approach change the learning behaviour
of the pupils?

1.5

Summary of Chapter 1

Using guided writing to teaching English Language writing can be effective as I found
that modelled and shared writing are not effective in order to improve pupils writing

skills in the English Language writing. I also found out that the pupils background,
general perception towards writing teaching and learning process and the English
Language itself have significant influence towards the pupils interest to learn writing.
Thus, I believe that by using guided writing approach, pupils will adopt positive
learning behaviour as this approach supports pupils who are experiencing difficulties
in writing and lacking confidence or motivation through scaffolding and; in the
process nurturing their developmental process in improving their writing skills.
Hence it is hoped that using guided writing approach will improve pupils skills in
English Language writing and increase pupils interest to learn writing. It is also my
greatest desire that it will also improve my teaching practice methods, skills and
knowledge in teaching English Language writing so that I can improve the pupils
score in Section A, UPSR English Language Paper II (014/2) and evaluate pupils
reaction to the use of guided writing approach in English language writing.

My key questions in this study include; Does guided writing approach improve Year
6 pupils achievement in English Language writing?, Does guided writing increase
pupils interest to learn writing?, Does the use of guided writing approach improve
my teaching practice methods, skills and knowledge in teaching English Language
writing? and How does the use of guided writing approach change the learning
behaviour of the pupils?