FOCUS OF INVESTIGATION

Research issue and background of research issue.

RESEARCH ISSUE

According to the 2006 English Curriculum and its supplement, the emphasis of the curriculum is
that the students are able to communicate in English by mastering the whole skills. However, it
is not easy to master all the skills; there must be one important skill that covers the whole skills.
Based on the statement above speaking is the most important skill that should be mastered by
students in order to communicate in English fluently.

In this case, the students must study hard to master it and the teacher should create a good
atmosphere in class. However, it is contrary to the real situation in class. Speaking activities do
not work in class because many factors prevent students from speaking English with their
friends. They are afraid of making mistakes, of being laughed at by his or her friends and of
having lack of confidence in their ability.

Considering problem, relating to speaking activities in class and helping students to improve
their speaking skill is part of the teachers job. He or she is expected to have right teaching
techniques to provide students with appropriate teaching materials and to create a positive
classroom environment. Therefore, the students will have opportunity to use English among
themselves.

In the classroom, the teacher must create the situation that can encourage real communication,
many activities can be designed to make majors element lively. Puppet is one of the techniques
that can be applied in teaching speaking because puppet is one of potential activity that gives
students feeling of freedom to express themselves. Puppets are also potentially useful to
encourage students of interact with each other orally.

In this research, I focus on the Puppet Theatre. The reason for using puppet theatre is because
I can give more opportunities to pupils to make turns in speaking during the times allocated. I
assume that puppet theatre is a combination between language practice and fun. They can
express their ideas freely because they will speak on the related topic using puppets while
standing behind the designated theatre.
BACKGROUND OF RESEARCH ISSUE

First of all, from my own experience as a student, I could still remember when I was in primary
year five, the teaching of English language mostly involved the memorization of grammar rules.
There was little or no chance for us to practice speaking skills in the classroom because most of
the time, the teacher would be the one who did the talking. In addition, my teacher believed that
drilling was the best and quickest method to ensure that students received as much input as
possible. The teacher was left with very little time as he had to prepare us for the Ujian
Pencapaian Sekolah Rendah (UPSR) examination. On the top of that, most activities in the
classroom were mainly about the writing and copying teachers notes on the board. I had no
chance to be involved in group activities that could encourage me to speak English in the
classroom.

When I was placed at SJK(T) Ulu Tiram for school based experience, I had an opportunity to
observe a few English lessons. From my observation, I noticed that English teachers at this
school still used teacher-centred approach when teaching the year four students. The teachers
read the textbook to students and after that the teachers would write some important points on
the blackboard. Moon (2005) believes that students need to use English language in order to
survive and to conduct everyday lives such as making friends and travelling. Therefore, I can
say that during this observation, students were indeed given the opportunity to speak and use
the language in the classroom, but it only occurred at very minimum level.

While I went to SJK(T) Ladang Seremban for my first practicum, I had a chance to observe a
few experienced teachers classrooms. The lessons that I observed were much more interesting
and engaging. For example, in a lesson that I observed, the teacher was teaching students
about verb. Instead of writing down the grammatical rules on the board, the teacher gave
students a newspaper article and asked them to highlight the verb in groups. I believe that
students enjoyed this activity more rather than when the teacher explaining the grammatical
rules on the board. Moon (2005) highlights that it is important for teachers to provide activities
which are enjoyable and interesting and which make students want to continue doing the activity
so they get more practice. Apart from asking students to highlight verb in the newspaper article,
the teacher asked students to write down the verbs that they found in the article on the board.
Nonetheless, I think teaching too many verbs exposed to students at one time could lead to
cognitive overload.
Through my personal experience, observations, as well as interviews from some pupils, I can
say that there are two main reasons why students speaking skills do not improve. The first
reason is the way the teacher teaches students does not encourage them to speak the
language. The second reason is giving too much input to students at one time could discourage
them from speaking about the topic discussed because they are experiencing cognitive
overload.

I found this issue still exists in my teaching practices. I use Root Cause Analysis (RCA) in order
to get further understanding about my problem. According to Burns (2005), RCA is a
methodology for finding and correcting the most important reasons for presence of problems.
Therefore, below is my RCA to identify my issue:
 Pupils are not able to differentiate between demonstrative pronouns (this, these,
that and those)

Q1 = Why pupils are not able to differentiate between demonstrative pronouns?

Pupils are not able to differentiate between demonstrative pronouns because

Answer: they are confused on how to differentiate between this, these, that and those.

Q2 = Why pupils are confused on how to differentiate between this, these, that and those?
Pupils are confused on how to differentiate between this, these, that and
those because they did not have the knowledge on how to use
Answer: demonstrative pronouns correctly.

Q3 = Why pupils did not have the knowledge on how to use demonstrative pronouns
correctly.
Pupils did not have the knowledge on how to use demonstrative pronouns
Answer: correctly because pupils understanding was not so deep in grammar.
 Q4 = Why pupils understanding was not so deep in grammar?

Pupils understanding was not so deep in grammar because they were not given
Answer: enough esposure and practice.

Q5 = Why pupils were not given enough esposure and practice?

Pupils were not given enough esposure and practice because they did not want to
Answer: learnt about grammar or demonstrative pronons specifically because they didn't find
it interesting .

Figure 2: Table of finding Root Cause Analysis (RCA)