ACTION RESEARCH REPORT

ENGLISH PANEL

SMK ALMA BUKIT MERTAJAM

MASTERY LEARNING A REWARD FOR BETTER COMPREHENSION IN LITERATURE COMPONENT

OF FORM 1 POEMS FOR PMR CANDIDATES

By:

Puvaneswari Vadivelloo

Guru Cemerlang

Form 3 English Teacher

SMK Alma, BM

2011

MASTERY LEARNING A REWARD FOR BETTER COMPREHENSION IN LITERATURE COMPONENT

OF FORM 1 POEMS FOR PMR CANDIDATES

By:

Puvaneswari Vadivelloo

Guru Cemerlang

Form 3 English Teacher

SMK Alma, BM

2011

ABSTRACT

Language teachers are entrusted with a huge responsibility of developing language and communication skills among their students. For maximum input, the best teaching approach is the learner-centered teaching approach. However, the potential to explore the learner-centered teaching approach is rather challenging in our Malaysian classrooms. The nature of our students with attributes such as limited language proficiency, lack of confidence, negative attitude and motivation, towards learning English language and literature and the culturally oriented norm with a long tradition of unconditional obedience to the authority hinder the learner-centered teaching approach. Because of these circumstances, the move to make students to become independent learners is somehow hampered. Ideally, it is best to employ the learner-centered teaching approach in the classrooms. But the culture inherent in us and the nature of our students only permit us to use the teacher-centered teaching approach or a mixture of both learner centered and teacher-centered approaches when necessary. Thus ,a complete departure from the traditional teacher-centered and

text-book driven teaching, to that of a learner-centered teaching to create independent learners do not seem encouraging in our second language setting. Based on these factors, I have carried out a study on mastery learning ( learner centered) as the teaching approach in producing better results in literature component of Form 1 Poems for PMR candidates this year in SMK Alma, Bukit Mertajam. This study consists of 39 students of 3A2 who will be sitting for their PMR examination this year. The research was conducted in the month of June to July 2011 during their class English lesson, mainly two periods in a week. With the less motivation and confidence towards literature component, mainly poems, these students seem to have very low confidence in answering the form one poem questions. Putting this in my mind, I came out with the mastery strategy approach in order to make my students to master these section in the PMR Paper 1(questions 35 to 37). In order to know what exactly I did.please read the report till the end.

Introduction

Teachers immediate concern when discussing the choice of teaching method focuses on

who the learners are, what their current level of language proficiency is, what sort of

communicative needs they have, and the circumstances in which they will be using

English in the future (Richards & Rodgers, 1986). Yeah.., I agree with the above statement. Once when the teachers receive their timetable at the beginning of the semester, the first sight definitely will be; Which Class? So do I. For this year, I was given two Form Three classes, 3A2 and 3A5 respectively. Well, to tell the truth, I was impressed with 3A2 and a little bit unimpressed with 3A5. Hence, I have to pacify myself because I have the title of Guru Cemerlang. So..no complaints and comments. Do your job well, this is what I told to myself. Moreover, my great principle, Pn Manisah has placed a high hope on me as an educator.

The needs, goals and abilities of each learners vary and must be determined before decisions about method can be made (Richards & Rodgers, 1986). The teachers normally decide the choice of teaching activities, teaching methods, teaching materials and learning activities after observing the actual needs of the students. Teaching methods and instructional strategies used are the teachers means and ways to help students clarify and understand the texts. To that, I applied mastery learning approach in teaching the techniques of answering questions 35 to 37 in PMR English paper one.

Mastery Learning

Mastery learning refers to the idea that teaching should organize learning through ordered steps. In order to move to the next step, students have to master the prerequisite step. Mastery learning engages the learner in multiple instructional methods, learning levels and multiple cognitive thinking types.

According to Davis & Sorrel (1995): The mastery learning method divides subject matter into units that have predetermined objectives or unit expectations. Students, alone or in groups, work through each unit in an organized fashion. Students must demonstrate mastery on unit exams, typically 80%, before moving on to new material. Students who do not achieve mastery receive remediation through tutoring, peer monitoring, small group discussions, or additional homework. Additional time for learning is prescribed for those requiring remediation. Students continue the cycle of studying and testing until mastery is met. Block (1971) states that students with minimal prior knowledge of material have higher achievement through mastery learning than with traditional methods of instruction.

Cited from Davis & Sorrel (1995): In summary, mastery learning is not a new method of instruction. It is based on the concept that all students can learn when provided with conditions appropriate to their situation. The student must reach a predetermined level of mastery on one unit before they are allowed to progress to the next.

In a mastery learning setting, students are given specific feedback about their learning progress at regular intervals throughout the instructional period. This feedback, helps students identify what they have learned well and what they have not learned well. Areas that were not learned well are allotted more time to achieve mastery. Traditional instruction holds time constant and allows mastery to vary while mastery learning or systematic instruction holds mastery constant and allows time to vary (Robinson, 1992).

Background of 3A2

Comprising of 39 students (boys 19 and girls 20), this class holds only Malay students. With various background they are actually motivated but lack of confidence. They seem to be motivated during the time present and later tend to portray the attitude of no interest. During my English lessons, they usually sit quietly and pay attentive attention throughout the lesson. They usually say : yes, understand , can , no problem whenever I pose questions after each session or class. To my record, questions raised by this class can be counted. The beauty of this class lies in the hands of the girls mainly and a few boys (maybe seven out of nineteen). These bunch of students tend to listen, follow and do what I say, leaving the rest less hardworking. It is usually this is what I say, well if anyone tend to give any excuse for not doing or handing in your work you will face the concequencies. Due to this magic words of mine, 3A2 is always up to date in sending in their task, even though there are times I face jokers on and of. The main language used in class is none other than Bahasa Malaysia. There are times where, I myself utilize this language during my teaching in order to give the clear meaning of the activity conducted in class. Yet, not forgetting English as the main communication tool, I always make sure the instructions are said twice; in Malay and English. Somehow, as time passes by, majority of my students has the tendency speaking in English ( even with broken or Manglish).

So, let me touch about poems with 3A2. Gosh! They are lost! They have forgotten all the poems that they covered in Form One. They remembered the title but forgotten the poet or vice versa. And the main problem was they did not know what was the poem about (message), the meanings and of course the theme.. According to the syllabus of form one literature component, students are exposed with these three poems, that are:

1. The Dead Crow by A. Samad Said

2. Lifes a Brief Candle by William Shakespeare

3. The Lake Isle of Innisfree by William B. Yeats

Poerty in literature

Literature is a product of culture. Literature is created from human activities and it is born of mans timeless desire to understand, express, and finally share experiences. Literary works reflect about parts of human lives such as values, morals, experiences, feelings, thoughts, cultures and interests. As product of culture, the literary works are a medium of the writers to communicate and share about their lives, knowledge, experiences, and problems to the readers. A literary work, like prose, poetry, and drama, may give a certain impression and contribution to the readers such as giving the readers about awareness of the truth of life as in The Dead Crow, giving personal pleasure to the readers (Lake Isle of Innisfree), feeding heart of the readers (Lifes a Brief Candle), and helping the readers to be cultured man. Therefore, it is important for the students to read and study literary works, because literary works not only provide certain styles of language use but also they can increase and enrich students knowledge, experiences about human problems.

In English language teaching settings, many literary texts are used as additional passages. The use of literature in language teaching gives many contributions to increase students achievement such as creative thinking, motivation, and enjoyment. One of the genres of literature that is taught in language teaching is poetry. The teaching of poetry should address the students to prepare them in visualizing, searching for main ideas and understanding the poems. The students must be addressed on comprehension of poems both the structure and the contents. In comprehension process, the students read and identify important points or information of poems in which the information are useful for the students in improving their achievement and their literary competence of poems.

The Problem

The problems of teaching poetry commonly place on the use of materials, the use of teaching technique, and students comprehension of poems.The first problem is the students have low ability in comprehending poems both its structure and its content. A short test was conducted as my early step in this research. I distributed a sheet of questions comprising only the three poems stated above (appendix 1). Well, the breaking news was none of my 39 students manage to obtain all correct answer. Worst, most of them scored less than six over fifteen.

Accordingly, the students comprehension of poems is not satisfactory. The current data on the result of students test reveal that the students average score was 59.7 (fifty nine point seven). Therefore, it indicates that most of the students still have low comprehension of poems.

Considering the facts above, there is an urgent need to implement a strategy or technique that can help solve these problems. In this case, the dynamic strategy of teaching poetry should be considered. It can guide and facilitate learning process in order to enable the students learn and create a better atmosphere of learning. The strategy also may attract the students attention toward comprehension of poems and increase their motivation by actively involving in learning. In addition, the use of appropriate strategy in teaching poetry can solve the problems occuring in poetry lesson. Mastery learning was the best choice.

Research Method

The research design of the study is action research. The action research is classroom action research since the problems are found in the classroom. This study is designed to apply a strategy to solve the problems in poetry lesson especially improving students comprehension of poems. The design of this classroom action research is a cyclical process adapted from the model proposed by Kemmis and Taggart (1988). It comprises four main steps, namely planning, implementation of action, observation, and reflection. Before implementing the four steps, I conducted a preliminary study to know the real problems in poetry lessons. Preliminary study aims at identifying the students problem in comprehending English poems and how the problems should be overcome. The subjects of the study are 3A2 students of 2011. The numbers of the students are 39 students. All students have the same treatments in the teaching and learning process. Let me state how each step was done during my research.

Step 1 : Planning

In this phase, I planned the action by dividing the students to groups of five. Each group is asked to search questions related to the poems. They are assigned to give at least 10 questions for each poem. Then, they sit in groups and divide the task among themselves.

Step 2 : Implementation of action

Collected questions of the stated poems are pasted in A4 papers according to the titles. At this stage, students are placed in three groups, according to the three poems. Mainly there will be a group of :

1. The Dead Crow

2. Lifes a Brief Candle

3. The Lake Isle of Innisfree

Step 3 : Observation

At this phase, students observe the questions ( students centred). Then, they discuss within their group and answer the questions. They might answer similar questions over and over (mastery). This will improve the cognitive thinking levels of students and they tend to get familiar.

Step 4 : Reflection

This will be more on class discussion to determine the correct answer. At this point, I only facilitate and comments. Students run the whole task.

Research Findings

The research findings are presented on the analysis of the collected data deriving from the implementation of the strategy in improving students comprehension of poems. The data and findings of the study were presented based on the result of students understanding. The implementation ofthis strategy is used to increase students achievement in scoring correct answers for poem questions. They also have positive attitudes towards group work in order to complete the purpose of learning. The outcome from this strategy was extra ordinary. Students managed to score correct answers for the questions on poems. Through this method, they are exposed to the same and similar questions over and over. They seem to obtain the correct answer even though they have not finished reading the question. Well, I succeeded in implementing this mastery learning, as the saying goes ; practice makes perfect. Now, my students are really good in questions 35 to 37, so to say three points are already in their hands. The real outcome was during the Trail PMR, the number of students scored correct answer for this section was higher compared to other sections. In conclusion, all findings showed that mastery learning strategy especially in poems was successful in improving students and promoting students to be involved actively.

Further Suggestions

Based on the conclusion above, these suggestions are addressed to English teachers and the future researchers. The teachers of literature are recommended that they use mastery strategy to improve the students comprehension of poems or short stories. Teachers from other fields are also recommended to use this strategy for their subject such as history or mathematics. The strategy provides some procedures that should be followed by the teachers and the teachers should give more attention how to control students discussion in groups or with other groups. The future researchers are suggested that they can use this research as a reference for conducting further research in the same field or other literature subjects by following its procedures.

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