THE USE OF REPETITIVE CHANTS TO IMPROVE SIMPLE SENTENCES

CONSTRUCTION AMONG YEAR 4 PUPILS

CHAPTER 1 : INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background Study

Thirusanku and Melor (2014) stated that English is an imperative second language

(L2) and opted as a lingua franca and commonly used in third world countries. Malaysia still

falls as one of the countries that uses bilingual education system where the national language

used is Bahasa Malaysia. Therefore, English language became the second target language for

Malaysians. Marko Modiano (2017) quotes that the significance of mastering English

language is not about being able to talk to native speakers but it is crucial for students to

acquire it in order to utilize it in their education, work or social activities. Hence, when

English Language became the language of communication, it has become compulsory for

Malaysian students to excel in the language and able to acquire the language acquisition.

Malaysian education system serves as a starting point to shape the younger

generations to be competent in the target language and possess the ability to compete with the

global community. Kurikulum Standard Sekolah Rendah (KSSR) which is the new Primary

School Curriculum is used in government schools until year 2021. It consists of 5

components which are Listening and Speaking, Reading, Writing, Language Arts and

Grammar. Aligning with the Malaysian Education in 2013-2025 and Malaysian Education

Ministry, the clear objective of learning all these components are by the time they finish their

Year 6 schooling education, students will be able to master all the skills learnt in the syllabus.

The current Malaysian English Language Curriculum has undergone several reforms ever

since and now it is revised to align with the Common European Framework of References

(CEFR) to teach English Language in primary schools. According to Ong (2010), the shift
from traditional assessment to formative assessment in the curriculum is to aid and give

leeway to teachers to monitor and assess student’s learning and achievement in a more

holistic way.

Darmiza and Albion (20130 state that Malaysian leaners start learning at the age of

six and learners will continue to use the language until their tertiary education. Therefore, it

has become an uphill task to teach English in rural areas. it can be seen a lot of attention is

paid by the government in curbing language skill problems especially in writing among

Malaysian ESL students (Normazidah, Koo, and Hazita, 2012). Writing skill is always been a

difficult task for students and this is supported by Nesamalar, Saratha and Teo (2001) who

observe that Malaysian students are lacking writing skills. This situation has indeed caused

concerns among English practitioners in schools since writing component is one of the

important components in mastering the target language. According to Fatt (2007) it is not an

easy task to teach ESL learners especially in rural schools to develop writing skills.

For most students in rural areas, the exposure and usage to the English language is

very limited. This is supported by Sofi (2003) in his study where he came to the conclusion

that majority if students especially in rural areas has minimal interaction in English and this

leads to students unable to perceive the foreign setting.

Chong, Tan and Mardziah (2011) revealed in their study that a vast number of

students are unable to string a simple sentence in a written text. In other words, the ability to

produce and write sentences is a prerequisite in learning but many Malaysian students are

facing a serious problem when they are incapable of mastering the writing skill in English.

So, there is a clear evidence that the poor development of the receptive skill tends to impact

the acquisition of the productive skills especially the writing skill.

 In the writing component, simple sentences (SVO) is considered as an imperative

element that students should be aware of. It has subject, verb and object in a complete simple

sentence. According to Swan and Walter (2013) prepositions become a tall order to learn as

they have various meanings in other languages. Malaysian students always have their mother

tongue interferences as they tend to apply the sentence structure that are taught in their L1 in

the target language as well. Despite the challenges of simple sentence in writing, the mastery

of writing skill cannot be denied as it helps to join words and phrases into a sentence. This

will lead to the development of receptive skill that helps the acquisition of writing skills.

1.2 Problem Statement

As an English language researcher and practitioner, it has become common to deal

with mixed ability class where the pupils ranged from low to average level in their English

proficiency. The students were always proactive yet their English proficiency was not that

good. Most of the students had trouble finding the appropriate words to use in real life

context. Having to deal with this problem, researcher has used flashcards to cater the problem

identified.

Suyanto (2007) mentioned that visual aids, particularly flashcards, could give

direction to the students to concentrate to the subject taught. However, this did not work to

the pupils. They did not seem to enjoy the lesson through the use of flashcards and the

researcher could see that they were not interested with it. Researcher realised pictures alone

did not help the pupils to understand subject of a sentence for low proficiency pupils. Visual

aids can only hold pupil’s interest for few minutes and they were back to the stage where they

could not understand anything on simple sentences.

Simple sentences contain only one single main clause. They have one main verb. One

subject and one predicate and at times may have different kinds of modifiers. The modifiers
can be located in the beginning of the sentences or even end of sentences. This results to

weak students to be very confused and unable to grasp the concept (Verspoor & Sauter,2000).

The researcher noted the problem in the Year 4 pupils. Despite learning English from

preschool, the students were unable to construct even a simple sentence. The students had

poor writing skills and it becomes apparent in their sentence constructing. Some of the

sentences parts will be missing or the constructed sentences tend to be hanging, dangling or

the result of direct translation of the mother tongue. This has made the researcher concerned

with the student’s ability to construct simple sentence. In order to overcome this problem,

several activities were carried out to help the students with sentence construction.

The researcher used Lego Word Buildings to help students to identify the proper verb

and subject to be used in a simple sentence construction. The writer took note of the students

giving full attention and participation during the hands-on learning activities carried out in

the classroom. In his theory, Howard Gardner stated that humans have eight intelligences. He

further added that when schools are inspecting a certain topic, six different approaches can be

used in order to cater all the students in a class. When the main goal was to see whether

when approaching a specific topic, “personal ways” can be used in the form of playing

games, role play or any other interactions (Gardner, 2006).

The main problem identified was that the students were unable to construct simple

sentences in their English writing. Pupils could not differentiate or apply the subject, verb and

object in their writing. The researcher noted that the students needed some kind of structure

or routine in order to get familiarised with the simple sentence. The purpose of this study is to

use repetitive chant to improve simple sentence construction among Year 4 pupils.
1.3 Research Objectives

1) To determine the usefulness of repetitive chant in improving low proficiency pupils

in simple sentence construction.

2) To determine whether repetitive learning interests and motivates students to learn

simple sentence construction.

1.4 Research Questions

1) Does the repetitive chant intervention help pupils to improve their simple sentence

construction?

2) Can repetitive chant boost pupil’s interest in learning English in a fun way?

1.5 Research Hypothesis

All students will enjoy learning thorough repetitive chant intervention.

1.6 Significance of Study

The outcomes of this research will benefit the students to be motivated to learn English

language and practice the language. Indirectly, it helps pupils to speak as when they chant, it

does not only help to retain in their memory to write down but it helps them to pronounce the

words correctly. They will learn the right way to pronounce and use the correct intonation
and

rhythm. Besides that, it gives teachers an insight what do pupils really love and what happens
when fun learning is incorporated. It gives researcher more ideas to make their classroom

lesson more interesting to cater the pupil’s interest. Addition to that, student’s self -esteem
and

confidence will increase as they would not be shy to use English language during repetitive

chants. When pupils get motivated to learn and discover the language, they will find solutions

despite to cultural background. On top of that, environment which does not allow pupils to

speak in English can be upgraded to a better environment which encourages them to speak in

English. Therefore, this study will not only help them to uncover areas in writing skill,
instead

indirectly help in grammar and speaking skills as well.

1.7 Limitations of the Study

Several limitations were as follows:

a) Time constraint as few months were not enough to carry out the intervention to get

effective results.

b) Different students have different learning style and using one intervention to cater all

students will not produce the expected results.

c) Small number of samples from a specific class.

1.8 Operational Definition

1.8.1 Repetitive Chant (Jazz Chant)

Repetitive Chant (Jazz chant) is a rhythmic of natural expression of an authentic language

which involves chunks of words, phrases or sentences. It involves chanting and rhythm which

can be accompanied by musical instruments or any sounds produced. According to Graham

(2006), the rhythm, stress and intonation of a chant should be exactly how a student hears it.
The usage of jazz chant in ESL classroom is common as language arts is used to teach other

skills as well.

1.8.2 Simple Sentence

According to Jackson (1982), a simple sentence has only one independent clause and it has a

single subject and a predicate. An idea, a question or a thing is described in a simple sentence

and it solely contains an independent (main) clause. In other words, it expresses a complete

thought that can stand on its own.

1.9 Summary

The introduction discussed about the importance of second language acquisition and how

important it is to Malaysian students to use the language in education as well as global

perspective. In Malaysia, rural pupils are in dire need to master the writing skill in the

language as they have the minimal contact and usage of English Language in their daily lives

despite the fact English is considered as second language in the country. This paper explores

the repetitive chant intervention chant intervention to improve simple sentence construction

in Year 4 pupils. Hence, the aim of this Chapter 1 is to present the Introduction and overview

of this study. the research illustrated the basis of research, objectives and research questions,

hypotheses, significance of study, limitations and the importance key terms.

 CHAPTER 2

The English Language is very crucial to be mastered in the lives of Malaysians. The

Malaysian government had also stressed the importance of English Language in schools in

recent years to equip the pupils with language learning in English. Ur (2011) expresses that if

someone has the grammar knowledge, they have the ability to express themselves in any

admissible language forms. Possessing a good grasp of knowledge helps to improve writing

skill too. This aligned with what McKay (2017) described that in order to be a fluent user of

English, one needs to have a good foundation in writing. Without a proper knowledge in

writing, mastery of other skills would be incomplete. Over the recent years, teachers had

approached writing teaching seriously, initiating ways to make it less dull. Abdullah Kuzu

(2007) stated that most teachers opted to traditional view of education where students become

passive learners. This eventually led students not motivated to learn when traditional methods

were incorporated. Therefore, teachers came up with new methods to incorporate fun learning

in teaching writing. This chapter will discuss the importance of writing skill, methods of

teaching and different approaches integrated to teach using repetitive chant intervention. This

chapter also gives an explanation n the action model used for the research,