ABSTRACT

Writing is one of the important skills when answering UPSR English Paper 2 questions. Students of SJK (C) Kuala Ketil facing problems in constructing simple and correct sentences. Poor writing skill especially in sentence construct cause the biggest failure in scoring the paper. Students have writing problems use words in an imprecise sense for the simple reason that words don't matter. Students often depend on arranging words to make a sentence. They dont have the idea how the words should be placed. Mother tongue dominance and proficiency level also affect these students in writing sentences. This paper reviews a research on the

effectiveness in using Writing Make Easy in improving students ability in writing simple sentences in SJK (C) KUALA KETIL. According to David Nunan (1999) its important to create a strong, engaging context. This will generate the motivation for your students to write. In this way, teaching writing is very similar to teaching a grammar point or any 'new language'. Students losing of confidence and interest in learning English as well as to answer UPSR paper 2. Writing Make Easy is a tool that can help students to write better in answering the Section A questions of UPSR Paper 2. Research showed how Writing Make Easy can make students write sentences in a simple way. From the observation found that students had improve their writing ability and achieve better in the test given after the treatments.

RESEARCH PROBLEM 1.1 Introduction

Writing is the act or art of forming letters and characters on paper, wood, stone, or other material, for the purpose of recording the ideas which characters and words express, or of communicating them to others by visible signs. A sentence is a group of words containing a subject and predicate. A sentence ought to express a thought that can stand by itself. A sentence is a beginning step of an essay so it is very important for a student to master the writing of the sentences. Furthermore, in UPSR, only perfect sentence or error free sentences are eligible to earn a mark. In this context, teaching sentences writing becomes a very important activity. This paper will discuss on the effectiveness in using Writing Make Easy Program in improving students writing in SJK (C) KUALA KETIL.

1.2 Background of the Research The English level in this school is low. Students are facing problems in achieving good marks in English exam. They are poor in using English. Past English evaluation in both written test and SBOA (School Base Oral Assessment) proved this statement. Students in this school cannot write a simple and proper sentence. One of the biggest problems of the student is that they fear to write. This is because they are unsure of the language. They feel a deep insecurity to write anything on the paper. The school students have a wide range of other languages knowledge that complements their learning. For many, English is one of several languages in which they communicate. Their multilingual background provides a rich landscape of cultural experiences as well as an "ear" for grammar and syntax, though never automatic "correctness." Because these students have had extensive English grammar study (often with much more intensity than native English speakers), they are influenced and will always confuse in the sentence structure. To help students write better, a special program called Writing Make Easy introduced. This research conducted to find the effectiveness in using Writing Make Easy in improving students ability of writing.

1.3 Statement of the Problem In English, word order is more important than it is in many other languages. Very often the students produce sentences that sound strange to the native's ear because the order of the words in the sentences is wrong. The basic pattern for English statements is: SUBJECT-VERBOBJECT(S)-PLACE-TIME. Sentences do not have to have all of these parts, but if all of the parts do occur, they most likely will occur in this order. If a sentence has both a PLACE and a TIME, one of these is frequently moved to the front of the sentence. A change in basic sentence order can make an English sentence nonsensical or make it mean something completely different. (http://esl.fis.edu/learners/advice/syntax.htm) To overcome these problems, Writing Make Easy is introduced in teaching to help students to write in better way and make learning more meaningful.

1.4 Conceptual Framework

This research attempt to show the program of Writing Make Easy is a better way than the normal explanation type of teaching sentences. Writing follow parallel tables will make low level students feel safe and easy. They just follow the style and avoid making errors. At the beginning step, students strictly follow the table to construct the sentences by merely copy the words accordingly to form the sentences. The conceptual framework of the research is shown in Figure 1.This research will be using qualitative approach to gather data on the experimental design of teaching. The subjects will be in one class. Data will be collected from the selected students where their English performance is poor. The Writing Make Easy activities will be carried out in learning to write while the result will be collected from time to time to compare the effectiveness of the program. The students will be given pre-test to collect the first data. After the pre-test, program will be carried out for 3 months and test will be given after the program to obtain data for analysis purpose. It is assumed that Writing Make Easy will bring advantages to the focus group students because Writing Make Easy will help students write better.

Data Analysis Pretest (1st Data Collected)

Post Test Compare to 1st Data

Figure 1

1.5 Purpose of the Research

The main purpose of this research paper is to find out the effectiveness of using Writing Make Easy in improving students ability of writing compare to the normal ways of teaching.

1.5.1 Research Objective

This research designed to fulfil the objectives of: i) Comparing the result of the two methods of teaching writing. ii) Evaluating whether other writing teaching method is preferable in teaching writing sentences.. iii) How useful is the programme in helping teacher to help students to gain their writing confidence. iv) Judging the feedback from the test can show the success of the method (Writing Make Easy ) in the development of the sentence writing.

1.5.2 Research Questions

The study is to discover a few answers to the questions: i) Does teaching using Writing Make Easy Program effective? ii) Do components in Writing Make Easy helps students learn vocabulary effectively and if so, how? iii) Which method is preferable in teaching writing? iv) To what extent does the feedback contribute to the success of the writing learning using the program?

1.5.3 Research hypotheses

The hypotheses constructed to answer the research questions are : i) The ability to construct the sentences through the program in focus group show improvement. ii) The students will involve in the program unknowingly, they will only follow the activities in the program and learning to write through the program. iii) Writing Make Easy makes students write better and can make use of their writing skill compare to the normal type of teaching learning method. iv) The test result from focus group will contributed more to the development of sentence writing compared to the normal teaching. 1.6 The role of the teacher In KBSR classroom, teaching merely students centred, the role of the teacher is to be a facilitator to enable students keep track in writing process. Teacher also helps to mark the sentences to observe students progression. 1.6.1 The Learners The learners are from the group of students that unable to construct simple correct sentences. This group of students also always score lower in Section A of UPSR English Paper 2. 1.7 Definition of Term

Writing Make Easy The definition of writing is the act of creating written works. It also means letters or symbols that are written or imprinted on a surface to represent the sounds or words of a language. Writing is the representation of language in a textual medium through the use of a set of signs or symbols. Writing can be very difficult to a student that is from a different mother tongue. Every day mechanical writing does not help students in writing. This programme cater the need of the students in knowing how to structure the sentences in correct way, to make writing easy by just following the tables

Normal Teaching Style

Normal teaching Style is a method of teaching using just the explanation of the teacher using chalk and talk or ask students to write by memorising the sequence of the words..

1.9 Summary

This paper is to find out the effectiveness in using Writing Make Easy as a learning system in improving students ability of writing sentences in SJK (C) Kuala Ketil. Writing sentences is a skill students must master in order to pass the UPSR Paper 2. The objective of the paper is to determine whether Writing Make Easy can help teacher to teach better and help students to participate actively in classroom activities. It also hopes to answer the question Does Writing Make Easy effective?

Pretest

1.
-- train -- station ______________________________________________

2. -- cuts -- hair

______________________________________________

3. -- afraid -- thunder

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4. -- pair -- pincers
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5. -- mango -- sweet

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6.

- apples -- bag

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7. -- temple -- hill

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8. -- singing -- leisure
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9. -- photo -- camera

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10. -- tomato -- vegetable

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APPENDIX 2

Post Test
Name : _____________________ 1.

-- drink -- milk

____________________________________________

2.

-- fly -- kite

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3.

-- borrow -- books

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4.

-- collect -- stamps

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5.

-- cycle -- school

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6.

-- eat -- noodles

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7.

-- jog -- park

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8.

-- collects -- living

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9.

-- play -- netball

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10.

-- eat -- worm

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