THE EFFECTIVENESS OF EXPLICIT TEACHING OF WORDS USED IN CHILDREN’S STORY BOOKS IN ENHANCING STUDENTS SPELLING SKILLS

LELA MISHARA BINTI A GHANI

A RESEARCH FOR THE DEGREE OF

B. ED.(TESL)(HONS)

Faculty of Education and Language

2011

Faculty of Education and Language

HBEF2503(SMP)

RESEARCH METHOD IN EDUCATION

TITLE:

THE EFFECTIVENESS OF EXPLICIT TEACHING OF WORDS USED IN CHILDREN’S STORY BOOKS IN ENHANCING STUDENTS SPELLING SKILLS

PREPARED BY:

LELA MISHARA BINTI A GHANI

MATRIX #:

800515025422002

NRIC #:

800515-02-5422

TEL. #:

019-4250730

PREPARED FOR:

MADAM SRI RANJANI NAIDU

LEARNING CENTRE:

KEDAH DARUL AMAN

SEMESTER SEPTEMBER 2010

TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT i

ABSTRACT ii

CHAPTER 1: RESEARCH PROBLEMS

1.1 Introduction 1

1.2 Background of the Research 2

1.3 Statement of Problem 3

1.4 Conceptual Framework 4

1.5 Aims of the Research 5

1.6 Significance of the Study 5

1.7 Limitation of the Research 6

1.8 Definition of Terms 7 – 8

1.9 Summary 9

CHAPTER II: LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 Introduction

2.2 Related Literature

2.3 Related Research

2.4 Need for Spelling Skills

2.5 Summary

CHAPTER III: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

3.1 Introduction

3.2 Research Design

3.3 Population and Sample

3.4 Research Instruments

3.5 Data Collection Procedure

3.6 Data Analysis

3.7 Summary

REFERENCE

APPENDICES

ABSTRACT

The ability to spell words correctly is an important foundation skill require for pupils to

be an effective writer. As we knew, book is one of the objects that could change a person.

Research indicates that through explicit teaching strategies such as visualization, analogy,

mnemonic and morphemic knowledge can assist the pupils to cement the orthographic pattern of

words in the mental lexicon.

This study will examine whether using explicit teaching of story books series to a group

of six year five pupils from a class of sample can improve their spelling accuracy in isolation and

in prose. There will be five lessons using various explicit teaching which focus on using

strategies of reading story books strategies where appropriate during the engagement. The

activities are design to engage the cognitive, emotional and spatial part of the pupil’s brain.

The specific words that are taken from the story books were used because they deem to

be in pupil’s knowledge zone. In each lesson the target words will be say, read, written and use

during the engagement. Each session follows a familiar format to develop a sense of familiarity,

the rotation of activities will be vary and design to be stimulating, fun and engage a variety of

multiple intelligence.

The study will compare the pupil’s performance through their written tasks as document

analysis. The pre-test and post-test will be conduct by the researcher before and after the five

lessons and interviews will be done after the five lessons. The data from these three instruments

will be triangulate to see the equivalent of the respondents’ responses and feedbacks. All data

will be analyze to see pupil’s feedback and progress and the responses made will support the

finding and in making the research report in chapter four. Hopefully, this study will show that

pupil’s spelling skills will improve after they have been exposed to the explicit teaching tasks

which engage their auditory, visual and kinesthetic learning style.

CHAPTER I

RESEARCH PROBLEM

1.1 Introduction

The major concern of primary school teachers is the teaching of spelling. Teachers are

puzzle when pupils spell words correctly on daily lessons and misspell the same words in their

written work. According to Philip Distefano and Patricia Hagerty (1983), the research in spelling

was fairly clear about the major components of a good spelling program. They list down three of

them; first was ‘a list of high-frequency words, the second was ‘efficient procedures by which

the words are taught and the third one is an effective method for students to use when learning

how to spell words (Hinrichs, 1975 cited in Philip and Patricia). According to him again, the

spelling program must be supplemented with the development of a spelling consciousness, the

ability to use dictionaries for spelling and a great deal of writing (Hillerch, 1977 cited in Philip

and Patricia).

The primary teacher in Malaysia context can determine for themselves whether a

particular program used effective procedures or not. Primary school teachers are influence by the

used of ‘spoon-feed’ method in working on pupil’s spelling correction instead of using self-

corrected or test-study-test method as suggested by scholars. Teacher can also determine if the

story books promotes an effective method for teaching the pupils how to study words. In some

circumstance, it was difficult for them to know whether the words were high-frequency or not.

The major concern of this study was to determine whether the selected story books use

words familiar with the words in wordlist of the primary school English language specification.

A second purpose of this study is to determine whether the pupils misspell words they have learn

in their writing.

1.2 Background of the Research

Keith W. Wright (2010), being able to spell English competently and confidently can be a

major challenge for many learners. There are a number of reasons why spelling can be problem,

and a primary one is a lack of knowledge about sounds that the symbol combinations in words

can make. Keith added, the underlying reason is that one of the characteristics of the English

language is that many symbol combinations can make more than one sound. For example, the

“a” sound in mad /mæd/ changes in made /meɪd/. Likewise, “ar” in car /kɑːr / and canary /kə

ˈneə.ri/ – “ear” in bear /beər / and learn /lɜːn/. Another attribute is that many different symbols

and symbol combinations can make the same sound as in “k” in kangaroo and “c” in cat – “en”

in ten and “an” in many – “air” in chair and “are” in hare. Unfortunately, these important

characteristics are not always taught in schools.

According to Thomas Horn (1969), the important of high-frequency words in spelling

program is widely recognized. He reported that, “there is as yet no field-tested substitute for

direct instruction on the basic core of high-frequency words need in child and adult writing”.

Thomas statement was supported by Fitzsimmons and Loomer (1978), they adviced that “the

spelling words of highest frequency in child and adult writing should be studied by elementary

school children”. Hinrichs (1975), supported the statement made by both studies, they reported

that a good spelling program should concentrate on teaching children to spell words of highest

frequency in writing of both children and adult. Hillerich (1977) agreed with Horn and Wenzel

(1977) assured that teachers should choose high frequency words for children to learn to spell.

1.3 Statement of the Problem

This research is to prove that explicit teaching of words found in the children story books

help to enhance pupil’s spelling skills in English language production skills especially in writing.

Pupil’s performances can only be seen in through their written works, if teacher considers

speaking as another skills to make an evaluation on spelling, teacher might find the difficulties.

In tracing pupils mistakes in spelling through speaking teacher might came to its limit because

we can only correct pupils orally but not in prose or written work where teacher can directly

correct pupils spelling by proofreading.

We write for different purposes such as giving information, for entertainment and for

social needs. Wilson, Bradley and Reese 1985, Bruck (1988), most pupils with learning

disabilities had difficulty with all form of written expression, spelling problems rank as some of

the most difficult to remediate and were common. An explanation for why L2 learners have

difficulties in spelling was that they are less adapt than pupils in general education in devising

and utilizing spelling strategies that allow for systematic application of spelling rules. As Bailet

and Lyon (1985) suggested, deficient rule application ‘either alone or in combination with other

processing difficulties, can cause spelling difficulties. Similarly, Bruck (1988) had argued that

disable spellers “do not use their knowledge of sound letter correspondence rules when spelling

unfamiliar words. To better understanding why pupils with learning disabilities have spelling

problems, it is important to identify the strategy used when they attempt to spell words. It is

equally important to find the most effective approaches for teaching spelling. There is a growing

awareness that for instructional models to be effective with pupils having learning difficulties,

academic program must be tailor specifically to meet the needs of the pupils of those students

(Darch and Simpson, 1990). The pupils in Malaysian context receive very little formal

instruction in spelling. Other factors due to spelling problem are lack of experiences, lack of

vocabulary and lack of reading skills.

The aim of KBSR is teaching pupils to develop all the four language skills to help pupils

to be a competent user of English language. Realizing the above objectives, the educational

developers have draft out list of skills and vocabularies according to topic or certain themes from

pre-school to higher secondary level pupils. The issue here is, are English teachers in Malaysia

competent enough to design lessons appropriately according to the need of the pupils?

1.4 Aims of the Research

The aim of this study is to determine the effectiveness of employing explicit teaching of

words in children’s stories to enhance pupil's spelling ability. The pupils are able to write words

through spelling activity and take dictation correctly without mistakes.

1.4.1 Research Objective

The research objectives is to determine whether explicit teaching of words in

children’s stories can be utilized in an ESL classroom of pupils of intermediate

proficiency level of Year 5 pupils of SK Long Boh to enhance their ability.

1.4.2 Research Questions

i. Can explicit teaching of words used in the children’s stories enhance pupils

spelling skills?

ii. Can pupil’s dictation skills be improved through explicit teaching of words from

children’s stories?

1.5 Significance of the Study

The objectives of this study was to enhance pupil’s language skills and cognitive skills

which offer them motivations in learning on how to learn the effective way. It was hoped that the

outcome of the study will provide the best and effective ways for teachers as guidelines in

enhancing pupil’s language skills especially in writing.

According to Keith W Wright (2010), to be able to write well, learners need to spell well

and to be able to spell well, learners need to be skilled at the art of conversion, to be able to

convert the sounds learners hear when a word is spoken to their correct symbols and symbol

combinations. To be a competent reader learners must apply this ability in reverse and be able to

convert the symbols and the symbols combinations they sees or encounters in words to their

correct sounds. To be skilled at both aspects, learners firstly needs to know the various sounds

that the 26 alphabetic symbols and the many symbol combination can make. He added, in order

to be a competent user of the language, learners need to know all the English language

characteristics and English teacher need not abandon those characteristics in teaching and

learning which suggested by Keith as a basic to language skills.

1.6 Conceptual Framework

Children’s Story Books + Explicit Teaching

Reasons

Lots of high-frequency wordsAttract pupils to read

Big font sizeArouse pupil’s interest

Focus on Pupil’s Spatial and Cognitive Area

Activities

(Oral Activities)Shared Reading

Drilling on words

(Writing Activities)Pre-test (Scrambled Words)

Make words out of the letters in the boxesMake as many words as you can out of the given letters

Complete the square to form 4 wordsForm other words from a long word

DictationPost-test (Scrambled Words)

Data CollectionInterview (Pupils)

Document Analysis (Pupils)Pre-test and Post-test (Pupils)

Determine the effectiveness of explicit teaching of words used in children’s story books in

enhancing pupils spelling skills.

TeachingTeaching

1.7 Research Importance

This research is to see how effective of explicit teaching in enhancing pupils spelling

skills through the words use of children’s stories. This study also to find the suitability of the

children’s stories from one publisher in enhancing pupil’s spelling skills. Mostly, words uses

in the children’s stories are of high-frequency words. Basically, the authors of the children’s

stories have identified and make research before they publish such story books. Based from

the fact, the researcher will choose children’s stories which was suggested by the Curriculum

Development Division (2008), the program namely ‘The English Hour’ was suggested by Dr.

Rohani Abdul Hamid in 2001 monitored by Ministry of education. There is only few selected

school that have run the program and there have been a progress shown by the year one

pupils in reading and writing skills, but in some circumstance the program was again being

abandon because the pioneer teachers were transferred to other school. All over 94 books

supplied to those schools are kept in school library without further practice on the usage of it

according to the program.

This research is trying to dig and reuse those children’s story books to build the pupils

ability to read and write in English with confidence as in the English Language syllabus for

primary schools which aims to equip learners with basic skills and knowledge of the English

language so as to enable them to communicate, orally and in writing. In line with the aims,

this research will be implemented to a class of mix ability level of pupils to see the

effectiveness of the words used in children’s stories in enhancing pupils spelling skills in

writing words and taking dictation.

1.8 Definition of Terms

1.8.1 Explicit Teaching

Refer to direct instruction of a skill-set using lectures or demonstrations of the

material, rather than exploratory models such as inquiry-based learning. This method

is often contrasted with tutorials, participatory classes, discussion, recitation,

seminars, workshops, observation, case study, active learning, practical or

internships. Usually it involves some explication of the skill or subject matter to be

taught and may or may not include an opportunity for student participation or

individual practice. Some direct instruction is usually part of other methodologies,

such as athletic coaching.

1.8.2 High-Frequency Words

High-frequency words are the words that appear most often in printed materials

and spoken language. According to Robert Hillerich(1977), “Just three words ‘I’,

‘and’and ‘the’ account for ten percent of all words in printed English.” “High-

frequency words are hard for my students to remember because they tend to be

abstract,” say first grade teacher Kathy Chen. They can’t use a picture clue to figure

out the word ‘with’. And phonics clues don’t work either. “Learning to recognize

high-frequency words by sight is critical to developing fluency in reading. Kathy

explains, “Recognizing these words gives students a basic context for figuring out

other words. Once they recognize ‘the’, they can predict with amazing accuracy what

the next word will be.”

1.8.3 Shared-Reading

Shared-reading is a reading activity where a teacher reads a story while a group of

learners look at the text being read and follow along. Shared-reading is useful for,

encouraging prediction in reading, helping new readers and writers learn about the

relationship between print and speech, informally introducing print conventions,

providing an enjoyable learning experience and teaching sight vocabularies.

1.8.4 Dictation

The act of dictating a text or letter or of writing down what being dictated. For

example, the pupil’s writing of words spoken, a test or exercise of language

comprehension in which pupils write down words spoken aloud by a teacher.

Example, words written down that has been dictated.

1.8.5 Drilling

An activity which is practices of particular skill and often involves repeating

something several times to make one remember certain concept or memorizing. The

activity works by doing it again and again. For examples, spelling words and

memorizing math formula.

1.9 Limitation of the Research

The research is a preliminary study on how explicit teaching children’s stories enhance

pupil’s spelling skills. Results from the samples of the study only provide an overview of

how pupil’s response to explicit teaching of the story books strategies. It is incapable in

defining the definite answers and how reliable the findings were. The limitation of this

research restricts any generalization on the explicit teaching strategies of other learners in the

class. This research only applicable to that few pupils observed and interviewed. Without

more data and input, it cannot be determined whether gender or other factors relating to the

competency of the pupils. The research will be done in the researcher school only. Pupils

come in different culture, with different personalities, different abilities and multiple-

intelligence. The focus of this study involves only at one school. Pupils which are select as

experimental subjects may include those with lack of reading or pronunciation skills and this

will definitely pose as an obstacle to them when learning through reading story book. There

might be different results or findings if the study could be done in other school.

The study is done to only single race not to multi racial or multicultural pupils. Therefore,

the results which base on the background of the pupils might limit the finding or results. In

the unique multi racial country the way pupils performs in learning language depend on their

background or in other words how they use the language in their daily life.

The materials use by the researcher in the study might also limit the way pupils perform

in the lessons. The children’s stories from a single publisher might limit the writing styles or

the words use in the stories. There are many publishers in the market with better presentation

and writing styles. The suitability of the children’s stories depends on the pupil’s knowledge

or experiences. Some pupils are unable to build their first impression in the lessons because

they are not familiar with the words use in the children’s stories such as world seasons,

people, climate, fruits and others. This might limit pupil’s performance and ability to go to

the next level of the learning complexity.

The study mostly involves the teaching of reading and writing skills in the five lessons

and the pupils may not be provide with sufficient repetition of exposure to the context during

the study. This situation may not offer enough opportunities for the pupils to develop their

language skills and grammar.

CHAPTER II

LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 Mechanic of writing

Ronal L Cramer (1995), the mechanic of writing specified the established conventions for

words that you use in your documentation. Grammar reflects the forms of words and their

relationships within the sentence. For example, if you put an apostrophe in a plural word such as

in “Make two word’s”, you have made a mistakes in the mechanic of writing, not grammar.

Mechanic of writing concerns with the capitalization, contraction of words, writing

gerund and participle, writing numerals, writing pronouns, writing technical abbreviations,

acronyms, units of measurement and punctuation use in sentence.

The goal of mechanic of writing is to make writing precise and grammatically correct. It

is directed to make the writing systematic and being concerned about how to be correct in

spelling, punctuation, italics underlying, names of person, title of study in research paper,

quotations, capitalization and personal names.

2.2 The important Factors of Mechanic of Writing

Spelling in the research work should be consistent, clean and correct expert in a

quotation. The spelling in the quotation must be the original whether correct or incorrect. If we

have to divide any words, we should not do so at the end of the line. If the word does not fit

there, we should leave the space and bring the words in the next line.

Punctuation; the purpose of punctuation is to bring clarity in writing and to make it

comprehensible. Punctuation clarifies sentence structure, separating some words and grouping

others. It adds meaning to written words and guide for readers to understand as they move

through sentences. Commas, full stops, semicolons, colons, dashes and parenthesis, hyphens,

apostrophes, quotation marks and exclamation point all serve the function of punctuation and one

should take account of all these marks while writing.

Italics (underlining), in research papers and manuscripts submitted for publication, words

that would be italicized in print are usually underlined. In general we should underline foreign

words used in an English text. The name of the book in which a person is doing research is

always italicized.

Names of Persons, generally a researcher should state a person’s name in a text of his or

her research paper fully, accurately and exactly as it appears in the original source. For example

Martin Luther King, Jr. should be used as it is not as only Martin Luther. Researcher must not

use formal tittles in referring to men as women, living or dead, such as Prof. Devklota. Dr.

Sangita. Instead of it, the researcher should only write Devkota, Sangita and so on.

Titles of works in the Research Paper, title of the publication works in the research paper

should be cited form the title page not form the cover page. For capitalizing titles, one should

capitalize the first words, the last words, the words and the principal words, the last words and

the principal words in both titles and sub-titles. Generally title of the works must be underlined

or italicized. Title of the names of books, pamphlets, periodicals, films, radio and television

programs etcetera should be underlined if hand written or italicized if printed in the research

paper.

Titles of the names of articles, essays, short stories, short poems, chapters of book and so

on should be put with in quotation marks. The same is for the case of unpublished work, such as

lectures and speeches.

Quotations, only the most important words, phrases, lines and passages should be quoted

in the research paper as briefly as possible. The researcher should put them with in quotation

mark if they are three lines or less than three lines. If a quotation runs to make than four lines, it

should be put under indent.

2.3 Punctuation and Spelling in learners’ writing

Hossein Shokouhi and Sara Zadeh (2009), two mainstreams of writing mechanism which

students encounter difficulties are punctuation and spelling. These two are mistakenly considered

somewhat trivial to many students and this causes teachers to often ignore them as being

insignificant. Students should realize that some of these errors are so crucial that they sometimes

can hamper communication.

Ferreiro and Pontecorvo 1999 cited in Hossein and Sara, the development of punctuation

is a psychological and educational importance because it is a part of writing that needs to be

dealt with the text construction. Messenger & Taylor (1989) citen in Hossein and Sara

acknowledge that in writing, punctuation takes the place of the sound features (pitch, volume,

speed) and physical gestures constantly used in speech. Steinhauer (2003), study strongly

supports the notion of a direct correspondence between punctuation and implicit prosody, which

is defined as the rhythm of the writer’s inner voice. He discovered that commas are in fact likely

to trigger subvocal prosodic phrasing. He also found that both punctuation and implicit prosody

during reading may have a strong influence on how we comprehend sentences. Bar- Aba, (2003),

punctuation marks have been studied within a variety of theoretical and descriptive frameworks.

Broadly, they have been relegated to organizational and rhetorical roles. The organizational

punctuation marks are said to signify breathing, syntax and rhythm. Included here are quotation

marks and commas. The rhetorical punctuation marks, on the other hand, play a discoursive-

expressive role. They convey the writer’s attitude with respect to the status of the information.

Among these are, for example, exclamation points and ellipsis dots. Shaughnessy (1977), a main

characteristic of basic writers’ punctuation is the inconsistency in their use of commas and

periods –which are, in fact, the two most frequently used marks of punctuation. Commas are

inserted at odd places which suggest no structural requirement, and both commas and periods

mark off sentence terminations, or presumed terminations. A main source of error shows up as

the failure to tell sentence boundaries which often leads to the incorrect joining of two or more

sentences with a comma (comma splice) or with no punctuation at all (run-on).

One of the hardest tasks the beginning writer of English must overcome is the acquisition

of spelling. Shaughnessy (1977), over a third of the errors that students in writing courses make

at the first level of instruction are spelling errors, and as the students move into more advanced

vocabulary and begin to take greater risks with words, the proportion of errors may grow to

almost half.. This difficulty is largely due to the ambiguous relationship between the spoken

sounds of the language and the graphemes that represent them in writing. In Shaw’s (1965),

words, “the correct spelling of many words does not even approximate the sounds being

represented.”In an analysis of a corpus of misspellings, Katz & Frost (2001) discovered that

errors are not a phonological, but rather, are nearly always errors that produce a homophone for

the correct spelling. Katz & Frost (2001), the most vulnerable letters in a word’s orthographic

representation are those whose relation to the word’s phonology is most ambiguous. Katz &

Frost consider ‘geminates’ (due to their apparent irrelevance to pronunciation) and ‘unstressed

vowels’ (because of their particularly ambiguous relation to the printed vowel) the most

ambiguous. Shaw (1965) recounts that no words in English are more often misspelled than those

which contain unstressed (or lightly stressed) vowels. Katz & Frost (2001) refer to the reduction

of unstressed vowels to schwa /∂/, which makes them less favored for graphemic encoding.

Another major feature of the system that causes spelling “demons” is the existence of mute

graphemes (silent letters). Vachek (1973) these belong to different levels of predictability based

on the clarity and consistence of the functions they perform in the orthography. As an example,

the silent e which frequently occurs at the ends of words has the definite function of lengthening

the vowel in the preceding syllable, as in sit versus site. In contrast, Vachek mentions instances

of mute graphemes like the b in doubt and debt, which he ranks as “clear foreignisms”. Ryan

(1973) believes that for many people the key to good spelling is distinguishing between long

vowels and short vowels. The cognitive representation of a word’s spelling has been

characterized by Katz & Frost (2001) as consisting of two kinds of information: (1) association

between phonemes or phoneme clusters and letters, and (2) associations between spoken

morphemes (including words) and whole printed morphemes. Koda (1999) relates the lack of

accord between pronunciation and orthography directly to the nature of English orthographic

representations. In their study of the developmental stages in the acquisition of spelling

strategies, Varnhagen, McCallum & Burstow (1997) found that morphologically based spelling

strategies occur slightly later in development than phonological and orthographic strategies.

They found morphology to be the most difficult type of linguistic information for children to

acquire. Misspellings do not always have roots in the orthographic system. Shaw (1965)

observed that over half the errors commonly made are caused by misspelling the easy, simple

words that nearly everyone can spell, due to “oversights” or mistakes of the eye. Letter reversals

(scrambles) and graphic confusions (e.g. mistaking b for d or p for q) also belong to this

category.

2.4 Teori and Approach

2.4.1 Explicit Teaching Model

Explicit teaching involves directing student attention toward specific learning in a highly

structured environment. It is teaching that is focused on producing specific learning outcomes.

Topics and contents are broken down into small parts and taught individually. It involves

explanation, demonstration and practise. Children are provided with guidance and structured

frameworks. Topics are taught in a logical order and directed by the teacher.

Another important characteristic of explicit teaching involves modeling skills and

behaviours and modeling thinking. This involves the teacher thinking out loud when working

through problems and demonstrating processes for students. The attention of students is

important and listening and observations are keys to success.

2.4.2 Implementation of Explicit Teaching in Spelling Class

Explicit teaching is useful for introducing topics and specific skills. It provides guided

instruction in the basic understanding of required skills, which students can then build on

through practice, collaboration, repetition, hands on activities and developmental play.

Fathman & Whalley, (1990) cited in Hossein Shokouhi and Sara Zadeh (2009), in spite of

the recent focus on process-oriented approaches to writing and the call for more emphasis on

content rather than form both in L1 and L2, in their practice of writing classes, many teachers

maintain a strong interest in correctness on the surface levels of grammar, vocabulary, spelling,

punctuation, etc. Cumming, Kantor & Powers (2002) realized that expert TOEFL writing

assessors consider aspects of surface form such as length, spelling, punctuation, etc. before

attending to the content. It is usually assumed that as L2 knowledge increases, various language

skills develop automatically. However, as Koda (1999) maintains, empirical evidence suggests

otherwise; certain language skills, particularly those involved in writing, seem to require explicit

instruction.

Explicit instruction is a sequence of supports; setting a purpose for learning, telling

students what to do, showing them how to do it and guiding their hands-on application of the

new learning.

Explicit instruction begins with setting the stage for learning, followed by a clear

explanation of what to do (telling), followed by modeling of the process (showing), followed by

multiple opportunities for practice (guiding) until independence is attained. Explicit instruction

moves systematically from extensive teacher input and little student responsibility initially — to

total student responsibility and minimal teacher involvement at the conclusion of the learning

cycle.

2.4.3 The framework for focused literacy instruction

A Framework for Explicit Instruction Focused Literacy Lessons

 Maintenance of the specific literacy learning focus

Introduction Elaboration Practice Review

     

Brief Lesson Orientation

Setting up focused lessons in terms of specific aspects of literacy

Overview of new learning

Purposes of assessment tasks are made clear

Review of relevant prior learning

 

Linking new to known concepts; re-teaching if necessary

Clarifying

Demonstration and modelling

Guided Instruction using Guided reading/writing, Reciprocal Teaching or Cooperative Reading

Guided Student Practice

 

Independent practice

Skills, knowledge & use of aspects of literacy

Application of new learning

 

Summary, Review & Reflection of specific literacy learning (oral and /or written)

Student reformulation and articulation of learning

Formative assessment through monitoring of the talk is ongoing across the phases of the lesson

As teachers we can only provide an active, progressive and sequential program of

instruction when we are clear about what it is we want children to learn; when we provide a

meaningful, child-centered and focused instructional program. When consideration is given to

focus learning we need to provide students with opportunities to make sense of the learning by

creating purposeful connections between lesson purposes, lesson tasks and texts, and lesson

reviews or conclusions.The following framework for teaching and learning literacy (an

adaptation of ‘The model of effective teaching’ by Rosenshine and Stevens, (1986) supports

teachers to organize their instruction in an explicit and systematic way. Applying the framework

assists teachers to construct lessons in a way that the literacy learning purposes are clear, direct

and progressively presented. It is important for students in that it establishes the learning task and

the management and organizational routines clearly and does not allow the learning task to be

loosely presented or blurred within talk about other things. It enables the students to actively

connect ‘new learning’ to ‘what is known’. Time allocated in each phase is determined by the

specific lesson purpose for that lesson on that day.

2.5 Former Research

Hossein and Sara (2009), the comparison between the punctuation marks in this section is

carried out within classes of marks with similar frequencies. In the first frequency class,

apostrophes appeared as the most troublesome punctuation marks for GW1 and GW2 subjects in

the R-P task. Apostrophes were often ignored both for contracted auxiliaries (be and have) and

for the possessive cases. Commas appeared as making the largest number of errors compared to

periods and capitalization in both the R-P and the production task for all the three subject groups.

The reason may be the relatively more patterned nature of capitalizations and periods. Every

sentence begins with a capital letter (although there are other instances of the use of this marker,

too) and nearly all sentences end in periods.

Hossein and Sara (2009) added, most of the misspelled words of all three groups fell

within the range of the 500 most frequent words of the English language. Included in this range

were words such as one, right, always and patient. Smaller proportions of misspellings belonged

to frequency ranges beyond the first 1000 most common words. This may be because students

used fewer words in these frequency ranges, which is quite expectable. Among the nine different

causes of misspellings studied in this research, vowel letters were the greatest source of problem

constituting over 23 percent of the errors. Most of the misspellings caused by the choice of the

wrong vowel were with the vowels in unstressed syllables (schwa) which is known as a major

problematic area of the English spelling system, even with native speakers.

Keith W Wright (2011), a key factor that has repeatedly come to the fore is the

importance of vowels. A special characteristic of English words and the syllables of which they

are comprised is that they must all contain at least one vowel that is “a,e,i,o,u” or the semi-

vowels “y”. words and syallable must have at least one vowel, and stand alone vowels are

usually long. There are many words in English language where the name of a consonants is

pronounced as their initial sound, for example, ge-ography, de-fend and em-brass. When these

words are pronounced, only the name of the consonant that begins the word usually heard and

that is where the spelling problems can begin. He added, it is important to know and to

remember that when a word begin with a syllable which, when pronounced purely, seem to say

the name of a consonant, such as the sound “d” in “demand, “b” in “because” or “p” in “Peter”,

the voiced consonant in the syllable must be accompanied by a vowel.

According to Casanave & Hubbard (1992), observe that surface language errors

(including those of punctuation and spelling) distinguish native speakers from non-native

speakers in the views of their instructors, and this persists for EFL writers at very advanced

proficiency levels. Schmitt & Christianson (1998) concede that an EFL instructor spends a great

deal of time correcting mistakes in the mechanics of composition, especially in punctuation and

spacing as well as in spelling. They relate this basically to the lack of a habit in the students to

proof-read their own texts before submitting them. Sometimes, however, this lack of attention is

also evident among teachers or researchers. The importance of the mechanics of writing

including those of punctuation and spelling deems so vast, especially in today's discourse studies

in writing, that a real call for research in the area is necessary. To this end, the present study

looks at many of these mechanisms from two task types: recognition production (R-P) and

production in terms of composition. Because it seems it is in the production task that learners

tend to use numerous unrelated punctuation forms.

The results of the study have shown that despite time and effort exerted in writing

classes, these courses do not lead to significant improvements in the students' performances on

various aspects of punctuation and spelling. Considering the limitation of time and the huge

amount of material to be covered, it certainly would not be feasible to include the teaching of

handwriting, spelling or punctuation in an academic writing class, at least as it is currently

practiced as such. A recommended alternative is to encourage students’ active participation and

peer-cooperation in acquiring these and similar aspects of writing through interaction with

authentic texts. It would also be advisable to put more emphasis on editing and proof-reading in

all courses which involve writing in the foreign language. One way that we as teachers of writing

researchers have noted over teaching such courses during years is that one of the best ways is to

make students sensitive to the formalities of writing.

CHAPTER III

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

3.1 Introduction

This chapter will be divided into few sections as follows, research design, population and

sampling, research instruments, data collection procedures, data analysis procedure and

summary.

The study will investigate the factors that contribute to enhance students’ spelling skills

through the implementation of explicit teaching on words used in childrens’ stories. Explicit

teaching is one of the appropriate ways to overcome or minimize students’ hurdles in mastering

spelling skills. The activities will be carried out in five different spelling lessons. The activities

that the researcher design are, oral and written activities such as, shared reading, drilling on

words, pre-test (Scrambled Words), make words out of the letters in the boxes, make as many

words as you can out of the given letters, complete the square to form 4 words, form other words

from a long word, dictation and post-test (Scrambled Words).

3.2 Research Design

The research is basically a qualitative research where the objectives is to prove

that explicit teaching through the use of children story book is an effective ways in

enhancing students’ ability in mastering spelling skills. There were multiple activities

will be carry out to prove the effectiveness of explicit teaching in mastering spelling

skills. To prove how effective the activities are, this study will select a group of students

and the samples are select at random. The samples are of five students among a class of

34 multi levels profiency of Year 5 students of Sekolah Kebangsaan Long Boh Simpang

Empat Perlis. In order to gather relevant data, five lessons will be conduct. The activities

are , shared reading, drilling on words, pre-test (Scrambled Words), make words out of

the letters in the boxes, make as many words as you can out of the given letters, complete

the square to form 4 words, form other words from a long word, dictation and post-test

(Scrambled Words).

The first activity, students will be ask to do pre-test, , shared reading, drilling on

words, pre-test (Scrambled Words), make words out of the letters in the boxes, make as

many words as you can out of the given letters, complete the square to form 4 words,

form other words from a long word, dictation and post-test (Scrambled Words). Every

activity was followed with ‘Wh’ questions and students were provided with a worksheet

for each and every time activities done.

Qualitative research data will be collect after the lessons to determine the

understanding of the activities as view from the perspective of the research samples. The

qualitative research instruments are in the form of a pre-test and post-test, semi-structure

interview and pupils activities sheet.

Semi-structured interview data from five pupils which are select at random will be

collect and analyze. The processes are transcribing the interview during the interview and

recording session. Thus, the notes and recorded materials are to prove the originality of

the data. It is a detail recording process occurring in the natural setting that provides the

basis for understanding the setting, the participants and their interaction. L.R.Gay (2003)

Then, researcher will collect data from the pupil’s worksheet. All five samples

will pass up their written work to be analyzed.

Lastly, pre-test and post-test results are the final type of data collecting after five

lessons. The researcher will compare both test and identify the salient issues relate to the

mistakes and errors of the student’s test papers. The mistakes will be analyzed by the

researcher to see the salient issues reflect to the learning process. The data collect are

important to see the equivalent of the responses that reflect on the effectiveness of

explicit teaching in enhancing spelling skills in ELT classroom.

3.2.1 Research Design Chart

3.3 Population and Sample

The samples selected were the students of Sekolah Kebangsaan Long Boh

Simpang Empat Perlis. The samples for this study are a class of convenience sampling

which is suitable for conducting qualitative research. The targets are a multi Level

Proficiency Year 5 Class enrolls of 33 students. From there 5 students will be chosen at

random as research sample. The use of simple random sampling is an ideal technique in

getting the salient results. “Random sampling is the best way to obtain a representative

sample” L.R.Gay (2003).

3.4 Research Instrument

The research instruments that use in this study are pre-test and post-test, a semi-

structured interviews protocol and pupils written work. A semi-structured interview will

be conducted to five students selected randomly for the interview after the whole lesson.

The evidence is in form of interview’s transcription and recorded material. The question

for the interview was in (Appendix 1)

Another documents analysis is the pupil’s worksheet. Their worksheets will be

collected after every lesson from the five samples. (See Appendix 2)

Lastly, two tests will be given to the pupils as another instrument. It is the pre-test

and post-test of the students through the whole writing lessons. Pre –test will be given

before any lessons began. Meanwhile, post-test will be given after the five lessons. (See

Appendix 3)

Researcher will work with the finding that are receive from the research

participants to identify their understanding of what they are doing from their own

perspective and which help them in answering the research questions. All responses and

findings will be triangulated to see the equivalent of the student’s performance in

learning spelling skills through explicit teaching style.

3.5 Pilot Study – Realibility/Validity

According to L.R.Gay (2003), all these types of instruments are chosen because;

i. Easier to answer

ii. Give freedom to respondents

iii. Economical in term of cost and time compare to experiment

iv. Stay open to new understanding and data through the study

v. Data are directly gathered from the participants.

3.6 Data Collection Procedure

The research topic “Enhancing Students’ spelling skills through explicit teaching

of words use in children stories’ is chose with the help and consultation of the supervisor

and the drafting of the proposal is made. The revise proposal is to be submitted to the

Ministry of Education Research and Policy Division for evaluation to carry out the

research. Researcher needs to get permission from the school to be granted.

A few steps are taken into consideration in collecting the data for this study. The

researcher is given 10 hours to collect the data at the school inclusive of five writing

lesson, pre-test and post-test, interview and observation as data finding documents. Pre-

test will be done earlier before any lesson and the post-test will be done at the end of the

five lessons. Pupils will be given worksheet in every lesson and they will be collect at the

end of the lesson as document analysis. Finally, a set of question will be ask by the

researcher and they have students to answer in about 20 minutes after the 5 lessons in the

interview. Besides that, students are ask to give their opinion and comments on the

activities done and the teaching and learning process during the interview.

3.7 Data Analysis Procedures

The data collection will be triangulate to determine the effectiveness of the

explicit teaching approach in enhancing students spelling skills. Beginning with the data

collection from the first interaction with the respondents and continue through the entire

study. After the five lessons, five students which represent the whole class are interview

on their experience in learning through explicit teaching. The important issues in

qualitative research while dealing with data collection, categorization and data integration

are not the one that stated by the researcher but which are stated by the students. From

there, the information will be collect from the students and analyze accordingly and the

important aspects in relation to the study will be note and highlight.

Another data collected was from the students worksheets. All students’

worksheets will be collected. In facilitating data analysis numbers of steps are used. By

narrowing the focus of the study researcher can determine which data is important and

which is not. Then, data analysis will be made after reduction process.

Data will be collect from data finding documents of students’ pre-test and post-

test. After the lesson, students will be asked to give their comments during the interview

session. The data analysis will be reinforced based on the participants’ information. Thus,

the qualitative data analysis is based on induction so the researcher constructs patterns

that emerge from the data and make sense of them.

After all the data analysis has been done, the research is expecting in obtaining

substantial information that will form the outcome of the whole study.

3.8 Summary

This study used to investigate the factors that contributed to enhance students’ knowledge

in mastering spelling skills. Explicit teaching approach is believed to be the best solution in

enhancing students’ spelling skills in writing. The instruments are design in this chapter will help

to determine how effective is explicit teaching approach in helping and improving the level of

students’ spelling skills. This study will be carried out and all the data collect will be analyze and

interpret.

Lastly, this study will explain and provide with the best way of teaching spelling skills

through explicit teaching. The study will then be used as guidance for English teacher in using

variety of activities in teaching of spelling.

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