Part 2

For task 2, I have decided to do a qualitative short research on one of my year 4 class which
consists of 25 students. The students in this class are of intermediate achievers. In order to
identify their grammar usage, I have divided the research into two parts; the first part was to test
their simple present tense usage, while the second part was to test their simple past tense usage.
Analysis of essay: Use of simple present tense.
In this analysis, I asked my students to take a dictation. In this way, I will utter the sentences
while my students will write it down in the paper provided for them. I prepared 5 sentences in
present tense for them. The sentences are:

Every morning Ali goes to school by car

They walk to school
The teacher brings many books with her.
The boy watches the television alone
Puan Aminah sells the food at the canteen

Table 1: Erroneous in Simple Present Tense

No. of students
No Erroneous form made by students

making the

Percentage

mistake

(%)

Every morning Ali go to school by car

15

60

They walks to school

10

40

The teacher bring many books with her

13

52

The boy watch the television alone.

16

64

Puan Aminah sell the food at the canteen

14

56

After completing the dictation, I found that 15 of my students made the same mistakes for the
first sentence. 60% out of 25 pupils made the error of using word go for a singular subject, Ali.
They were confused whether they should use go or goes. Only 10 students wrote the correct
sentence using goes.
For the second sentence, 40% of the students made mistakes. They used the verb walks by
addings to the sentence. While for the third sentence, 13 out of 25 students made mistakes in
their sentence. 64% students cannot write correct sentence when it comes to writing sentence
using the verb watch. For the last sentence, 14 students made errors in their sentence. It is
obvious that my students are confused to use present tense verbs. From the analysis, I figured out
that the students were confused about subject-verb agreement. They still cannot differentiate that
singular subject must be added with s when a verb follows while plural subject, s is omitted.
They told me that plural subjects means a lot, so they must add s to the verb, which is a normal
misconception among students.

So I decided to teach them present tense using explicit methods of grammar instruction. I explain
to them the rules how to use the verbs with the right subject in present tense. They have to first
identify the subject, before choosing the corresponding verbs. After that, I do the same activity
again and I found that my students improved a lot in using the verbs to construct sentences using
present tense.
Analysis of essays: Use of Simple Past Tense
To know my students ability in constructing sentences using past tense, I asked my students to
write an essay entitle How I spent my last school holidays. Due to the fact that they are
intermediate achievers, I provided some notes for them in order to help them generate ideas for
their essay. From the result I found that my students were confused in past tense too.
Paragraph 1

school holidays family Melaka

Paragraph 2

early drive reach happy

Paragraph 3

visit places afternoon lunch restaurant

Paragraph 4

evening home Melaka again

Table 2: Notes for my students to refer to when they write their essays

Table 3: Erroneous in Simple Past Tense

No

Erroneous form made by students

Last holidays, I and my family was go to Melaka.

My family and I wake up early. My father is driving there.

We reach Melaka and is very happy.

We are visit many places. On afternoon, we are eating lunch in restaurant.

When evening, we going home. I hope I is going Melaka again.

From the analysis of my students essays, I found out that majority of them used I and my
family and then was go. This mistake is common among students because of the confusion
between the National Language, Bahasa Melayu. The correct sentence should be, My family and
I went to Melaka. Next I spotted that my students could not change the verb wake up to woke
up followed by the usage of is driving in their sentences. They were confused that writing a
story should be in past tense. They used present continuous tense and it is wrong in the context.
The correct sentence should be, my father drove us there.
The next mistake I spotted is the tendencies of students to not add -ed to the word reach, visit
and some other words that required them to add ed. This is probably because students had
misconception that every verb in the past tense should be added with ed. Last but not least, I also
noticed that they were confused and were not able to change the verb go to its past form.
So I decided to teach my students simple past tense explicit methods of grammar instruction. I
chose this method because I believed that students will be better in understand about certain
grammar context after we taught and explain the rules to them first. I explained to them the rules
on how to use the verbs in past tense, what to do with irregular verbs and certain verbs that
completely changed in its past form. After that, I asked my students to write same essay again.
The final outcome was very satisfying. My students can write better using simple past tense verb.