STRATEGIES USED BY FORM 4 TEACHERS IN TEACHING READING TO TWO GROUPS OF STUDENTS WHO HAVE GONE THROUGH TLSME AND WITHOUT TLSME. (FROM TEACHERS’ POINT OF VIEW)

P.M.ASOTHA A/P S.P.MURUGAPAN

A report submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the award of the degree of Bachelor of Science with Education ( TESL ).

FACULTY OF EDUCATION UNIVERSITI TEKNOLOGI MALAYSIA

NOVEMBER 2007

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to take the opportunity to express my gratitude to my supervisor,

Encik Faruk Muhammad for his invaluable guidance, advice and motivation given to me

throughout the two semesters. To Encik Faruk Muhammad, from bottom of my heart,

thank you for your support and concerns. You have inspired me in many ways. Thank

you for being a teacher and friend to me.

Apart from that, I would like to express my sincerest appreciation to my parents,

husband, son and siblings for their support along the process of completing this thesis.

Last but not least, I thank everyone who has involved directly and indirectly in

helping me to complete this thesis.

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Especially dedicated to my beloved parents, husband, son and siblings.

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ABSTRACT

This research is about the strategies used by Form 4 English teachers to teach

reading. Specifically, the research wanted to find out teachers’ experience teaching

reading to students who have gone through ‘Teaching and Learning of Science and

Mathematics in English’ (TLSME) and those who did not go through TLSME. This

research was carried out at 3 different schools in Malacca with 2 respondents from each

school. This research was done using qualitative method. The instrument used to carry

out this research was by interviewing the respondents. The findings of the research

reveal that, teaching students with TLSME is easier compared to students without

TLSME, as the students have more exposure learning the language in Science and

Mathematic subjects. The students of TLSME are also exposed with ICT related tools.

Teachers use various methods in order to teach reading. However, the strategies vary

with the group of students. Some suggestions have been offered to maximize the process

of reading.

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ABSTRAK

Kajian ini bertujuan untuk mengenal pasti strategi-strategi yang digunakan oleh guru

yang mengajar Bahasa Inggeris untuk pelajar Tingkatan 4 dalam kemahiran membaca.

Kajian ini berfokus kepada guru yang mengajar pelajar yang telah melalui proses

‘Pengajaran Dan Pembelajaran Sains Dan Matematik Dalam Bahasa Inggeris’ (PPSMI)

(TLSME) dan pelajar yang tidak melalui proses PPSMI. Kajian ini dijalankan di tiga

buah sekolah di negeri Melaka yang diwakili oleh 2 responden bagi setiap sekolah.

Instrument yang digunakan untuk mendapat data adalah melalui temubual. Dapatan

kajian menunjukkan proses pengajaran yang dijalankan oleh guru yang mengajar pelajar

yang melalui PPSMI adalah lebih mudah berbanding dengan mengajar pelajar yang

tidak melalui PPSMI. Ini adalah kerana pelajar didedahkan dengan penggunaan Bahasa

Inggeris yang lebih pada matapelajaran Sains dan Matematik. Pelajar yang melalui

PPSMI diajar menggunakan peralatan berkaitan dengan komputer. Para guru

menggunakan beberapa kaedah untuk mengajar kemahiran membaca. Akan tetapi,

kaedah ini berbeza dengan kumpulan pelajar yang diajar. Beberapa cadangan diberi

untuk memaksimumkan proses membaca.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER TITLE PAGES

TITLE PAGE i

DECLARATION ii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT iii

DEDICATION iv

ABSTRACT v

ABSTRAK vi

TABLE OF CONTENT vii

LIST OF TABLES xii

LIST OF APPENDICES xiii

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS xiv

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 Introduction 1

1.2 Background to the Study 1

1.3 Statement of Problem 5

1.4 Purpose of the Study 8

1.5 Objectives of the Study 8

1.6 Research Questions 9

1.7 Significance of the Study 9

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1.8 Limitations of the Study 10

1.9 Definition of Key Terms 10

1.9.1 Strategies 11

1.9.2 Mother Tongue 11

1.9.3 TLSME 11

1.9.4 First Language 12

1.9.5 Rural Area 12

1.10 Conclusion 13

CHAPTER II LITERATURE REVIEW 14

2.1 Introduction 14

2.2 Purposes of Reading 14

2.3 Study Based on Reading Strategies 16

2.4 Various Types of Reading

Strategies 17

2.5 Teaching Reading 21

2.6 Teaching and Learning English 22

2.7 TLSME 23

2.8 Purpose of Implementation

of TLSME 24

2.9 Factors that led to TLSME 24

2.10 Government Effort in Helping

Rural Area Students Learn

English 25

2.11 Conclusion 26

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CHAPTER III METHODOLOGY 27

3.1 Introduction 27

3.2 Research Design 27

3.3 The Respondents 28

3.4 The Location of the Schools 28

3.5 Questions for the Interview 29

3.5.1 Section A: Personal Particulars 31

3.5.2 Section B: Input ( Training and

Competence ) 31

3.5.3 Section C: Product / Process 31

3.6 Data Collection 32

3.7 Data Analysis 33

3.7.1 Section A: Personal Particulars 34

3.7.2 Section B: Input ( Training and

Competence ) 34

3.7.3 Section C: Product / Process 34

3.8 Conclusion 35

CHAPTER IV FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 36

4.1 Introduction 36

4.2 Respondent’s Profile 38

4.2.1 Respondent A 38

4.2.2 Respondent B 38

4.2.3 Respondent C 39

4.2.4 Respondent D 39

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4.2.5 Respondent E 39

4.2.6 Respondent F 40

4.3 Strategies Used by Respondents 40

4.3.1 Using Interactive CDs 42

4.3.2 Computers and Browse Internet 44

4.3.3 Newspaper, Magazines and Articles 46

4.3.4 Reading Aloud 48

4.3.5 Skimming and Scanning 49

4.3.6 Exercises 50

4.3.7 Using Mother Tongue 51

4.3.8 Chalk and Talk 53

4.3.9 Textbook 54

4.3.10 Handouts 55

4.3.11 Group Work 56

4.3.12 Dictionary 58

4.3.13 Transparency 60

4.3.14 Body Language and Voice 61

4.3.15 Motivation 61

4.3.16 To Be one of the Students 63

4.3.17 Games 63

4.3.18 NILAM 64

4.4 Perceptions of Respondents on

TLSME 65

4.5 Conclusion 67

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CHAPTER V CONCLUSION AND

RECOMMENDATIONS 69

5.1 Introduction 69

5.2 Conclusion 69

5.3 Limitations 71

5.3.1 Time 72

5.3.2 Respondents 72

5.4 Recommendations 73

5.4.1 For Future Researchers 73

5.4.2 For Teachers 73

5.4.3 For the Ministry of Education 74

REFERENCES 75

APPENDIX 80

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LIST OF TABLES

TABLE NO TITLE PAGES

3.1 Types of Questions 30 3.2 Distribution of the Respondents 33 4.1 Strategies Used By the Respondents 41

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LIST OF APPENDICES

APPENDIX TITLE PAGES

A Questionnaire. 80 B Transcribe of the Interviews. 82 C Letter of Approval. 113 D School’s Performance Chart. 116

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LIST OF ABBREVIATION CD - Compact Disc L1 - Learner 1 L2 - Learner 2 OHP - OverHead Projector TLSME - Teaching and Learning of Science and Mathematics in English

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION 1.1 Introduction

This chapter talks about the background to the study, statement of problems,

purpose of the study, the objectives of the study, research questions in order to answer

the objectives, highlight of the significance and limitation of the study. This chapter also

gives background information on the research.

1.2 Background to the Study

Schools are source of expanding knowledge through Education and being the key

for development of any nation, we can say one of the fundamental requirements for a

nation to be a developed one is “Educated People”. Example Nepal, realize that through

Education can help the country to develop. The educated group or the Intellectuals of

Nepal are dedicated to provide Education to the Nepalese people. Government

organizations, non-government organizations and civic society, are working side by side

to develop an educated manpower for the nation. This is an example to shows that the

important of education to the nation development.

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We always hope our children will lead good and comfortable life by having good

Education. Educate can be defined as to train or instruct mentally and morally or provide

systematic instruction for the students. To be knowledgeable is to be well informed or

intelligent. Information is interred related with knowledge, commonly interchangeable

in general context. Parents send their children to schools to gather information or

knowledge so that they can earn their living by applying what they learnt in schools,

colleges or universities. The government provides infrastructures like buildings,

electricity supply, power,water, telephone, nowadays, computers, even internet services,

laboratories, sport facilities etc. as well some 324,000 teachers in Malaysia for about

10,000 schools across the country. Datuk Seri Najib Razak in the newspaper was

speaking about infrastructure development in Pahang to help rural areas students to

excel in education (News Straits Times, 2005).

In the RMK-9 ( Ninth Malaysia Plan ), it is planned that 23 billion ringgit will be

spent on education, and it is hoped the level of education will be pushed to a near or

equal to those standards in developed countries. This is no specific disagreement

between the parents and government that education is the most important aspect of our

life. Education involves the process of teaching and learning. This means that both

teachers and students need to cooperate with each other in order to make the education

system a successful one. To train and instruct mentally and morally is through the

medium of teaching. Teachers formally in schools and students are to receive those

prepared instructions, information or knowledge for their use in later part of their lives.

Eventhough it may sounds simple, but the process can be very challenging.

In school, learning has become an active activity where teachers use four main

skills in teaching such as reading, writing, speaking and listening in their classroom

lesson. In order to make the classroom livelier, teachers utilize different strategies for

different lesson. They use different types of strategies just to make sure that the students

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are aware of their education system and environment. Nevertheless, it can also help them

to understand the lesson properly. Students also will be able to participate actively in

the activity involved while the lesson is carried out.

Basically reading is the root for students to learn writing, speaking and listening.

To read effectively, they have to read rhetorically by attending to both the content and

the persuasive strategies in a text. (John C. Bean,2002). Students read not for

information but they read so that they can also improve their pronunciation, vocabulary,

language structure and grammar. Various types of strategies used so that reading can be

an interesting activity. Normally students have problem in reading because they are

afraid of the mistake that they may do. Many people, including several professional

teachers, think that reading merely involves the ability to sound the words printed on a

page. It is important for you to realize that reading is much more complex than this

(Chitravelu, 1995 ). Since government has emphasized that English is important,

students do not learn English only during English classes but also in Mathematics and

Science classes.

To begin with, reading is one of the four skills when we learnt languages.

Through reading you are able to speak, listen and write. Besides afraid of making

mistake while reading, our students’ problem is shyness. It is difficult for the teachers to

ask them to talk while the lesson is carrying on. They prefer to be quiet and get scolding

from the teachers rather than try to read even a short passage. This attitudes need to

change or else we will end up with students that have no ability to give opinion. Their

shyness is partly because of friends. Friends tend to laugh at their mistakes and this can

automatically degrade them. They should have the motivation saying that when people

laugh at you, you should laugh with them.

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English has become one of the important languages in the school. There are

more books and reference that use English as their main language. There is a phrase

saying that “You Know English, You Know the World”. This phrase means that, as an

individual we should learn language that can make other people understand us. To

communicate with outside world, we should learn English and because of this English

has become world recognized language. Step by step we learn English through

communication with people. The problem in learning English among our Malaysian

students is they are not the native speaker of the language. Since small they speak in

their mother tongue that is for Malay is Bahasa Melayu, for Chinese it can be Mandarin

or Cantonese and for Indian can be Tamil, Telegu or Malayalam. So if the family

background is English speaking people, then the students do not have to face the

problem of learning and understand English in the early stage. Unfortunely, in rural area

the main problems is family background where they did not practice English at home.

The students themselves have to give motivation and self esteem to learnt English.

English can be a boring subject and interesting subject depends on the exposition that

the students go through while in primary or secondary school.

For rural school area, most of the students may face the problem of reading in

English. This is because their environment is such where English is only learnt in

school. They might have parents that have no English background and they are not

being exposed with the important of reading in English. This problem can be solved if

everybody plays his or her role equally by helping students to understand the important

of reading in English. They can start by exposing them to newspaper reading. One of

the activities that can be done is through reading newspaper in class and search for

information. In reading there are two components involved that are skimming and

scanning. Skimming is reading quickly for the main idea, while scanning, looking for a

specific piece of information.

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Another factor that can cause students in rural area are not interested in reading

English is because they themselves have no motivation towards learning it. It is easier

to motivate them in activity rather than just give them theory lesson. Some of the

students feel that theory lesson is not interesting. They just like to participant in activity

that involve movement such as reading in a group. While they have this kind of

thinking, we should encourage them by giving more reading articles and books so that

they can start from small group to larger one.

One of the objectives of the KBSR is the reading component emphasizes sub-

skills which help develop pupils to become independent and mature readers (Chitravelu,

1995). Clearly we can see here that through reading activity students can improve not

only their reading skills but in the same time they can become a good reader. Towards

this end, pupils are also encouraged to read extensively outside the classroom with

minimal teacher guidance ( Chitravelu, 1995 ).

1.1 Statement of Problem

Every student in school is given equal opportunity to learn English. It depends

on the students on how to learn the language. They can make it in easy way or the hard

way. Students who have interest in learning English will find it is easier to study the

subject rather than students that just come to classes for the sake of coming to school.

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Some of the problem that normally faced by the teacher is the difficulty that

faced by the students when they start to read. Teachers feel that students have no

interest to read even if it is a short paragraph. This is because who think that they are

not capable to read efficiently and they start to compare with the good students. For the

weak students, teachers need to come out with strategies that actually motivate them to

read more. Teachers must help their students to become independent readers. This is

because when teachers teach reading it is not just teaching students to understand the

text but actually using the text to teach them reading skills. Students must give feedback

to the text and in order to make them to do so, several questions should be asked during

the lesson. Through this activity teachers can detect if the students read for information

or read for the sake of reading. Teachers also can find out if they are interested with the

text provided.

Teaching reading involves teaching basic word, phrase and sentence recognition,

as well as the ability to retrieve information contained in texts ( Chitravelu, 1995 ).

Students have the tendency to think that when they read a text or an article, they need to

understand all the information provided. Teachers need to help students read with

adequate understanding. This means that students do not have to understand everything

in a text. They need to understand only what is important for their purpose.

According to Nesamalar Chitravelu, Saratha Sithamparam and Teh Soo Choon

(1995 ), if teachers insist that students should understand everything in the text, this will

only be making them develop a reading –related disease called ‘barking at print’.

Students start to concentrate on few ‘hard words’ that they think it is important to know

the meaning in order to understand the whole text.

Teachers can help students to read at appropriate speed. Normally this kind of

training does not exist in Malaysia. Students read a short passage for half an hour or

forty minutes. As a mature reader, they do not practice this way of reading. Normally

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they read different things at different speeds. To help students to be a good reader, first

get texts that students can read comfortably. Avoid giving students stories that they

need to stumble over every other word in the story. Automatically students will have no

interest to read the stories because they do not enjoy it.

In Malaysia, teachers will practice reading aloud in the classroom during the

lesson. Many think that reading is sounding out the words in print. However, as

students grow up and become one of the society members, this reading aloud activity did

not actually give benefit to them. People who work as newsreaders practice this activity,

and reading aloud plays a very small part. When we read silently, we read a lot faster

since our mind and eye work a lot faster than our mouth. In the same time, we also do

not disturb others.

Although reading aloud is usually recommended for establishing the sound or

symbol relation which is beneficial in decoding new words, research has indicated that

enough potentially bad side effects may occur to discourage this practice (Hall, 1981).

Besides that, students find that the activities are not interesting and they feel they

need more understanding of the words rather than just doing the exercises. To major the

language is another problem because students without TLSME’s background normally

find it difficult to understand the verb and vocabulary. Compared to students that have

already been exposed to English not only during English classes but also in Mathematics

and Science subjects will need different way of learning reading for English classes.

Students without TLSME need different way of learning English classes. In the end,

present teachers need to come out with several strategies and activities so that can

increase students’ interest. Teaching reading, means enabling a person to acquire the

skills, strategies and attitudes required to make sense of the text (Nesamalar Chitravelu,

Saratha Sithamparam and Teh Soo Choon, 1995).

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1.4 Purpose of the Study

The purpose of this research is to see the different strategies that teachers used to

teach students without TLSME background and with TLSME background. The purpose

of this study is to identify strategies that applied by experience teachers and non-

experience teachers in order to teach two groups of students. This study also covered

how teachers are able to tackle the groups of students.

1.5 Objectives of the Study

The specific objectives of the study are as follows:

i) To find out if there are any different to the strategies used by teachers in teaching

reading to students with TLSME background and without TLSME background.

ii) To find out the justification of different strategies used to students

with TLSME background and without TLSME background.

iii) To find out the effects of the strategies used to students with TLSME and

without TLSME background.

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1.6 Research Questions

The aim of this study is guided in the form of these research questions: i) What are the differences to the strategies used in reading to students with

TLSME background and without TLSME background?

ii) What is the justification of using different strategies to students with TLSME background and without TLSME background?

iii) What are the effects of the strategies used to students with TLSME

background and without TLSME background?