USING ACTION SONG IN TEACHING PREPOSITION OF

PLACE AMONG YEAR 5 PUPILS

MOHD SHAHIRUL AFIDZI B. HADARAWI

INSTITUT PENDIDIKAN GURU

KAMPUS TUN HUSSEIN ONN

2016
1.0 Introduction

TESL is an acronym for Teaching of English as a Second Language. It is the teaching of

English in countries which uses English as their common everyday language but not as their
native language such as Malaysia. TESL is not about measuring the level of English is, but
rather it is about measuring English language teaching skills. More than just having the
knowledge about the English language, teacher will need to have a passion to teach that is to
make sure the students learn as much as they can during the teaching and learning process in
the classroom.

Professional teachers are responsible to improve the qualities of teaching and learning
process especially in the context of English language (EL). Malaysias education system has
gone through many changes and the changes vary from the curriculum until the techniques of
teaching. The Malaysia Ministry of Education had done major changes in the curriculum that is
from Primary School Integration Curriculum or Kurrikulum Bersepadu Sekolah Rendah (KBSR)
to Primary School Standard Curriculum or Kurrikulum Standard Sekolah Rendah (KSSR).
Present education system requires teachers to play role as facilitator of knowledge which should
be more prepare and aware in the delivering and use the learning situations sufficient and
effectively. In tune with the changing role of educators, teachers need to be more innovative,
creative and effective in its delivery and always think of new approaches to adapt their practice
to the will of the pupils as knowledge workers in the information revolution era of the 21st
century.

Teacher can improve themselves to become innovative and creative by doing action
research. This will help teacher to be an effective teacher in delivering messages. Hargreaves
(1996) as cited in Koshy V., (2005) points out that researched based practice would be more Commented [C1]: Is it possible to obtain primary source for this
info?
effective and satisfying for all practitioners. Teacher is the practitioners of education, therefore
Commented [C2]: format
not only scientist are able to conduct research, teacher also are able to conduct research to Commented [C3]: format
improve the quality of teaching. Action research is a step by step procedure of monitoring over a
period of time by variety of techniques such as questionnaires, diaries, interviews and case
studies so that the researcher can get feedback and translate it to data collection for them to
refers and makes improvement.

Background
 The Primary School Standard Curriculum (KSSR) has been implemented in Malaysian
Education System in 2011 with the aim to enhance the pupils English language (Mohamed,
2000). According to Year 5 KSSRs English document standard, the goal of the English Commented [C4]: Any more recent lit review?

language curriculum is to help pupils acquire the language in order to help them use it in their
daily lives, to further their studies and for work purposes (Malaysia Education Blueprint 2013
2025). Yet, the acquisition and learning process will be impeded if the pupils could not Commented [C5]: format

understand English grammar and they surely have difficulties in writing.

According to Johnson (2016) without good grammar, clear communication is nearly

impossible. Proper grammar keeps you from being misunderstood while expressing your
thoughts and ideas. Teaching grammar in the early English learning is very important. Thus,
teaching grammar is quite difficult because there are so many rules to remember. If the pupils
unable to master the rules in grammar, this will affect their writing and daily communication.
Grammar makes written content more readable and in turns more interesting. If it is necessary
to repeatedly reword sentences while reading, the flow becomes disrupted.

According to Lindstromberg, 1991 and Capel, 1993 as cited in Delija and Koruti (2013) Commented [C6]: Change to rpimary source

prepositions in English are a well-known challenge for learners of English as a second

language, as they are one of the most problematic areas. The English preposition is usually
defined as a word that connects a noun to other words and shows the relationship between
them (Collins Cobuild English guides, 1998). Prepositions are very confusing and sometimes Commented [C7]: Change to other source such as journal or
grammar book which is more recent
hardly understandable even for native speakers, and when it comes to EFL students the
problem is much bigger, because they have to understand all the nuances of the English
prepositions, to memorize them and to properly use them.

Besides that teacher also find that preposition are hardly to teach because pupils tend to
get confuse about the meaning of preposition itself and when to use it. Teacher have to give a
definition and various example so that their pupils can understand the real concept of
preposition. Despite these challenge many English course book only provide a general overview
about the definition and function of preposition. most of the time important aspects of the
acquisition of prepositions are not mentioned at all, such as when a certain preposition has
more than one meaning depending on the context it is used in. Also, there is a lack of
information about which verbs or nouns require a certain preposition.
 Students love to be taught in a fun and creative way in the learning process. Using
music in the classroom is one of the great way for teachers to achieve success with EL learners.
We tend to remember things that have an emotional component because our amygdala and
neurotransmitters act in concert to tag the memories as something important (Levitin, 2006).
Music can be the medium in teaching EL because the memory that the students acquired while
sang the song can be a long term memory and easily to be trigger. Students are capable to
acquire knowledge from listening to a song as listening to a story. More words were acquired
when they were sung rather than spoken. The greatest amount of vocabulary was acquired
when the stories were both sung and illustrated which refers to the action songs. Action song
contains animation such as cartoon or pictures that synchronise with the song

Context?
Context

Sekolah Kebangsaan Seri Maimon is my third school for my practicum. I went for this
phase 3 practicum from January to April and I am teaching English subject for my major and
Pendidikan Seni Visual as minor subject. This school is placed outskirts in the heart of Batu
Pahat district near Kampung Parit Othman, Parit Sulong and located strategically besides the
main road. This school is a regular primary school. It is known as the second choice school
among parents if their children unable to enrol in cluster schools nearby this school. In addition,
most of the students come to school on foot or by bicycle as their houses located just a few
blocks away from the school.

The academic achievement of this school is still below Ministry of Education (MOE)
target although in English subject they achieved the schools target of getting more As students
in last years UPSR. The level of proficiency of the pupils in Sk Seri Maimon is still below
intermediate. All of the pupils are Malay but most of them did not have exposure on English
Language. They tend to use their mother tounge which is Malay language to communicate with
their friends. This situation can also be a reason why this school still cannot achieved the MOEs
target in English subject. There are six English teachers in the school and the school just lost
their English excellence teacher that had been transferred to another school last January .In
contrary, the teachers are very hardworking and committed in planning the lesson interesting.
The schools mission for this year is to achieve zero failure in UPSR and I hope that they will
achieve their goals.

The school consist of approximately 35 teachers with 400 pupils. From what I observe in
my practicum, even though this school was located in the rural area, the condition of the school
facilities was very good because it have the prospective to fulfil the needs of 21 st century
classroom. SK Seri Maimon have a very well-functioning computer lab and every class have
their own reading corner for the pupils to do some reading during their free time. Other than
that this school have a very conducive library with some interesting English books inside the
library for the pupils to read. Besides that every Tuesday this school will have a English reading
session early in the morning before classes and after recess time. All this facilities and activities
are the prove that this school is seriously concern pertaining to the pupils achievement level
especially in English subject.
Reflection on Teaching and Learning

Throughout my practicum one and two and based on my teaching experiences, I found
that the pupils was having difficulties in grammar preposition. I noticed that the pupils did not
have the capacity to use the English preposition accurately even though there were lots of
activities had been conducted during the teaching and learning process. They were not able use
English correctly. They faced problems concerning all the four major English language skills.
This is because as we know in linguistics, grammar is the set of structural rules governing the
composition of clauses, phrases, and words in any given natural language.

The difficulties that they have in comprehending grammar rules such as preposition
affect their use of the English language all together. This had me contemplate on my teaching
skills and the pupils learning capabilities because without proper understanding on grammar will
cease in using the language all together because of the lack of understanding in the grammar
section and because of this I made a decision to improve their grammar understanding even by
a little to aid their growth in the use of accurate English language.

In my third phase of practicum, i also observed the same problem in my year 5 pupils
which is grammar preposition. First time I noticed that my pupils had grammar problem when I
gave instruction and they were not able to follow my instruction because they did not
understand the instruction given. They confused the preposition of in and under. I also gave
them a simple grammar preposition test to check on their understanding about preposition and
their result was not satisfying. From that I decided to focus my research on how to improve
grammar of preposition.

Jayakaran and Norwati (2009) have mentioned that there are differences between the
use of prepositions in the English language and in the first language of the English Second
Language (ESL) users. To be able to produce a good quality product of English either in
speaking or writing, one need to have a clear understanding of English grammar. Preposition is
one of the important parts of grammar that pupils need to master especially when it comes to
giving directions.

Learning grammar should not base only on the drilling method because it can be
exhausting. Besides that, pupils motivation will decrease if we always use drilling method. Their
will lost focus and only hope for the class to end. According to the underlying pedagogical
principles of the curriculum (KSSR), lessons, which emphasise meaningful contexts and the
integration of language skills, allow pupils to learn by doing fun-filled activities. Contextualised
as well as purposeful activities will promote the fun element in language learning. Thus finding
attractive methods to teach my pupils about prepositions are needed.

To date, a large body of research has established the fact that effective EL usage in, for
example, academic speaking and writing demands comparatively advanced language
proficiency (Hinkel, 2013). Using EL skills effectively in speaking and listening, writing, and
grammar is the main objective of teaching English as second language (ESL). Researcher
around the globe had done many research related to EL to improve the usage of ESL students.

Hinkel (2013) also stated that the essential elements of grammar instruction can be
designed to be flexible within the curriculum structure and the amount of effort and time devoted
to each can be adjusted depending on learners needs. Curriculum designed is mainly to suit all
the students but the student ability in learning is different to one another. This is where the role
of the teacher comes to deliver the curriculum to suit with the students learning style. Grammar
instruction that has the goal of preparing students for academic studies needs to be designed to
develop learners practical and useful skills, directly relevant to producing academic text (Hinkel,
2013).
Initial Data Collection

a) Pupils work

In teaching and learning session, I carried out exercise where I gave them question about
preposition of place and many of them answered wrongly. Through the worksheets I can detect
that many of the pupils has problem with prepostion of place because they did not know which
preposition are suitable to be used in which situation. (Appendix A)

b) test

I had used pre- intervention test to validate the identified problem. The pre-test that I had
administered was on preposition of place which my pupils have to fill in the blanks with the
correct preposition. Pupils were given 30 minutes to complete the test. The scores obtained are
shown in Table 2 (Appendix B).
Reference

Delija, S. & Koruti, O. (2013). Challenges in Teaching Prepositions in a Language

Classroom. Iiste.org.
Retrieved 18 June 2016, from
http://www.iiste.org/Journals/index.php/JEP/article/viewFile/6783/6896

Hinkel, E. (2013). English Teaching. Research findings on teaching grammar for academic
writing, 3-21.

Jemaah Nazir. (2001). Penyataan dasar standard tinggi kualiti pendidikan, jemaah nazir sekolah
persekutuan. Kuala Lumpur: Kementerian Pendidikan Malaysia.

Jayakaran, M. N. (2009). Textbook representation of prepositions. Retrieved from

http//:www,ccsenet.org/journal.html

Levitin, D. (2006). This is your b rain on music: The science of a human obsession. New York:
Dutton Adult.