Even though writing is one of the most important skill that affect students English performance. Many Form 1 students experience major difficulties in PT3 writing paper section B recount writing. Based on the researchers’ observation and teaching experience as an English teacher in secondary schools and according to several studies, the researcher noticed that many Form 1 students score very low in section B recount writing due to poor elaboration and poor organizations skills.
Each component is 5 marks but students mostly managed to get 0-2 in organization and communicative achievement components. As Firmansyah (2015) in a research also stated that major writing problems faced by Form 1 students in writing are making coherent paragraphs and elaborating points.Despite all efforts which has been made by teachers to help Form 1 students to improve their elaboration and organization skills, they still continued to scoreless in both this components.
The researcher noticed that form 1 students score extremely poor in the elaboration components because they are unable to generate ideas to elaborate. Due to this, most of the essay answers that are expected to be 120 words would rather be submitted as an empty paper or written less than 100 or 50 or even 10 words . As supported by Neda (2012) that Form 1 students encounter poor elaboration skills in writing because they mainly experience “writers block” (Neda,2012.13).
Another problem is that Form 1 students are always exposed to writing materials that demand a high level of reading ability whereby students failed to read and find information to elaborate in their writing. Many form 1 students in schools are frequently exposed to limited writing materials like English reference books, textbooks and reading model essays that are specifically read to fulfill the exam requirements. In such circumstances, it test they reading ability and most often they don’t understand what they read because they do not interact with the prominent reading materials which eventually leaves them with hardly any knowledge to write. They are unable to comprehend the text they read and regenerate the elaborations given through the reading materials in their writing. Researches in Nasrin (2012) also reported that form 1 students always learn writing or depend to find some information that can help them improve their elaboration skills mainly through exam orientated learning materials either PULSE or KBSR textbook or reading model essays.
Next, the Form 1 students low scores in elaboration and failure to elaborate in their writing is connected to their inability to express their ideas in written effectively. The form 1 students in school tend to write around the point by repeating words and phrases as they are incapable of expressing their ideas. Some students even respond to their recount writing vaguely leaving the teachers a hard time to understand what they are trying to express in their writing. In short, a study done by Koo, (2010) also supported that many secondary students either upper or lower secondary mostly faced problems in expressing their ideas in writing. As in even intermediate level form 1 students who are targeted to elaborate well the given points ends up being unable to do so. (Puteh,2010).
Furthermore, the researcher also identified that majority of form 1 students in school scored poorly in organization because they do not organize their points systematically and logically in their writing. The form 1 students frequently do not convey their points explicitly but rather implicitly because they do not arrange their ideas coherently as in introduction, content and conclusion but end up writing as one whole or simply write without paragraphs, abrupt ending or hanging essay. As Sarala (2015) also supported that , in Malaysian classrooms ,most of the form 1 students essays were unorganized in terms of content and lacks coherence.
Lastly,during writing lessons and examinations, the form 1 students in the classroom hardly made an effort to plan or build a skeleton or framework to organize their points before writing which results to poor organization scores. Due to this habit, the form 1 students consistently ended up missing or jumbling up their points and made sure that teachers are unable to guess or understand what they tried to write. In certain situations during writing, they do sometimes cant move from one point to another as they cant see the relationships between a point and an evidence or example resulting to an extremely poor coherence in their essay. As Vishalache (2010) in her research also claimed that most form 1 students lacked the habit and efficacy to plan and to organize their essays with organizers resulting to lack of organization in their writing.
After I did all the research above I as a teacher decided to teach step by step and practice more of process writing rather then product writing. I would love to share the resources that I used to plan my Speech Writing Lessons.
Dear teachers here is a baby step guide on how to conduct a writing on speech lesson either in the class or online learning classes.
*In the class, teachers can photocopy the PPT slides and the outline template
*In the online class teachers can share in the computer screen- before lesson teachers can also email soft copy to students for pre-preparation
I have arranged each website link according to the lesson plan stages and where we can use the materials during our lesson.
Teachers can also adapt and adopt my lesson guide according to teachers lesson plans.
References for the template:
www.pinterest.com
References for the resources:
www.fords.org
www.write-out-loud.com
www.slideshare.net/28Sneha
www.slideshare.net/jennifersaculles
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