TOPIC 3 GRAMMAR IN THE MALAYSIAN PRIMARY SCHOOL

ENGLISH LANGUAGE CURRICULUM

3.0 SYNOPSIS

Topic 3 provides input on grammar in the Malaysian Primary School English language

Curriculum. It looks at the KBSR/KSSR syllabus and the language content therein. We

will also look at developing relevant activities to teach selected grammar items.

3.1 LEARNING OUTCOMES

By the end of this session, you will be able to:

1. demonstrate an understanding of the KBSR/KSSR Curriculum Specifications

2. explain the role of grammar in the KBSR/KSSR

3. identify grammar items and develop relevant activities

3.2 FRAMEWORK OF TOPICS

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Curriculum Specifications

ObjectivesActivities

From discourse to grammar

Guided noticing activities

Structuringactivities

Proceduralising activities

CONTENT

SESSION THREE (3 Hours)

3.0 The Ministry of Education has set out the Curriculum Specifications (Huraian

Sukatan Pelajaran) for each year of KSSR/KBSR. The document specifies what is to be

taught from Year 1 to Year 6. It comprises the four language skills of listening, speaking,

reading and writing as well as the language contents. The language contents are the

sound system, grammar and vocabulary.

3.1 CURRICULUM SPECIFICATIONS

Curriculum specifications for the English language syllabus have been prepared as

separate documents for each year of the primary school and these are known as

‘Huraian Sukatan Pelajaran’. Each document serves as a guide to teachers with regard

to the skills to be acquired by learners, the content or topic that is to be dealt with, and

the vocabulary and grammar items that pupils must know in order for them to use the

language.

Grammar forms part of the language contents in the Curriculum Specifications for

Malaysian Primary Schools. Grammar items and sentence patterns have been selected

from the list provided in the English Language syllabus to help pupils master the

structures of English. Two sections of the KBSR English Syllabus deal with grammar.

One section categorizes grammar under specific grammar labels and provides sentence

patterns to be covered under each label. In the other section, sentence patterns are

placed under functions and topics.

Grammar is taught every year under the KBSR syllabus. However, with the

KSSR syllabus, it is only introduced from Year 3 onwards.

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3.2 OBJECTIVES

The syllabus sets out the objectives to be met in the teaching of grammar. The

KBSR syllabus sets out its objectives as:

By the end of Year 6, pupils should be able to:

- use correct and appropriate rules of grammar in speech and writing.

3.3 LANGUAGE CONTENT

Two sections have been listed to assist teachers. For example, the Curriculum

Specifications document for Year 5 has been divided into section 5.0 (a) and 5.0 (b).

In section (a), grammar items to be taught have been specified under the

different grammar categories. To illustrate what is meant by each category and at the

same time to specify the scope and depth of the items to be taught examples are given.

Words underlined highlight significant points of grammar.

In section (b), suggested sentence patterns for teaching are given. These

sentence patterns are set out under some functions and/or areas of interest. In teaching

these patterns, it is important that teachers teach them in context and in a meaningful

way.

Teachers are advised to limit the number of structures used in any one lesson to ensure

that learners master the structures well. Teaching too many structures may not be

advisable for weak learners as these may only serve to confuse them.

3.3.1 KSSR

Primary (exit after Year 6)

The English Language Curriculum for Primary Schools aims to equip pupils with basic

language skills to enable them to communicate effectively in a variety of contexts that’s

appropriate to the pupils level of development.

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3.3.2 KBSR

Primary (exit after Year 6)

The English language syllabus for primary school aims to equip pupils with skills and

provide a basic understanding of the English language so that they are able to

communicate, both orally and in writing, in and out of school.

Reflection

Compare and constrast the KBSR Curriculum Specifications and the KSSR Standard Document for Year 3.

3.4 ACTIVITIES

In this section, we move to practicalities and consider how teachers may actually

go about helping young learners develop their grammatical knowledge in the foreign

language. We begin with seeing how common activities in the young learner classroom

can offer opportunities for grammar learning. We will also look at take noticing,

structuring and proceduralising, and some examples of activities.

Keep in mind that grammar items taught and learnt must be applied both to oral work

and writing exercises.

3.4.1 Working from discourse to grammar

Many types of discourse that occur in young learner classrooms have

grammatical patterns that occur naturally, but that can be exploited for

grammar learning.

It requires teachers to think about their language use from a grammatical

perspective, so that they become aware of opportunities for grammar that

arise every day.

Classroom discourse contexts and routines can serve to introduce new

grammar, with access to meaning supported by action and objects, or to

give further practice in language that has already been introduced in other

ways.

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Routines are an ideal context in which chunks can be expanded.

(Cameron 2010:111)

a. The language of classroom management

When children begin learning English, some very simple phrases for classroom

management can be introduced, and as time goes by, these can be expanded. Some of

the phrases originally used by the teacher can be used by pupils when they in pairs or

groups. The language of classroom management can thus act as a meaningful

discourse context within which certain patterns arise regularly and help with building the

internal grammar.

When organising practical activities, for example, the teacher may ask pupils to:

give out

the scissors

the books

the paper

The range of verbs to use with the nouns can be gradually increased:

give out

collect

tidy

the scissors

the books

the paper

The noun phrases can be expanded to match or to extend grammar development:

give out

collect

tidy

the small scissors

the green writing books

the paper from the cupboard

b. Talking with children

Conversations with individual children can be very powerful for language development,

because they can pick up on exactly what an individual child needs to know next to talk

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about what interests him or her. If a child volunteers something, in the first language or

in what they can manage of the foreign language, the teacher can respond in the

foreign language, offering a more correct way of saying it:

Child: my mummy hospital

Teacher: oh! your mummy’s in hospital. Why?

This type of ‘corrective feedback’ can be used for expanding the talk. If a child offers a

comment about a picture, for example, the teacher can respond with fuller sentences

that pick up the child’s interest:

Child: bird tree

Teacher: Yes. The bird’s in the tree. He’s sitting on the

branch. He’s singing.

By becoming ‘grammar aware’, it is possible to incorporate a lot of grammar teaching

through this kind of incidental focusing on form that seizes on opportunities and

operates in a child’s space for growth.

Can you think of other classroom routines which can allow opportunities

for practising grammar items?

3.4.2 Guided noticing activities

Activities in the previous section are those likely to lead to noticing of grammatical

patterns in the language. It is possible to construct activities that make noticing even

more probable, and which fit all or most of the criteria for good noticing activities.

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a. Listen and notice

Pupils listen to sentences or to a connected piece of talk, e.g. a story or phone call, and

complete a table or grid using what they hear. In order to complete the grid, they need

to pay attention to the grammar aspect being taught.

b. Presentation of new language with puppets

When introducing a new pattern, the teacher can construct a dialogue with a story-line,

that uses a ‘repetition plus constrast’ pattern, to be played out by puppets. For example,

a story where a crocodile and a squirrel discuss going swimming; with dramatic irony

added because the children know that the crocodile wants to eat the squirrel. The pupils

listen several times to the story-dialogue:

S: I wish I could swim like you, Croc.

C: I’ll teach you to swim.

S: Oh, will you?

C: Let’s start next week. Shall we go swimming on Monday?

S: No, sorry. On Mondays, I clean my house.

C: Shall we go swimming onTuesday?

S: No, sorry. On Tuesdays, I visit my grandmother.

Similar pattern for Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays.

C: ((wearily)) What about Sunday?

S: Yes! On Sundays, I’m free.

C: ((more excited; licking his lips)) OK. On Sunday we’ll have our first

swimming lesson!

The teacher can then recap the routine events by pointing to the calendar and saying

the key pattern phrases on their own: ‘On Tuesdays, I visit my grandmother’ etc. To

help input processing, pupils may be given a blank calendar and be asked to complete

Croc’s regular routine from listening, making a distinction between routine events, ‘On

Mondays, I catch fish’ and, non-routine events ‘On Sunday, I’m going to teach Squirrel

to swim’.

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Reflection

Think of other examples of guided noticing activities.

3.4.3 Language practice activities that offer structuring opportunities

In structuring activities the goal is to help learners internalise the grammatical pattern so

that it becomes part of their internal grammar. The focus is on internal work that

happens as a result of activities that demand accuracy, rather than on fluency in

production.

a. Questionnaires, surveys and quizzes

These are commonly found in young learner course books; after input on favourite

foods, for example, children are asked to interview their friends to find out their favourite

foods. Preparation and rehearsal of the questions is necessary to ensure accuracy, and

the activity must be managed so that the questions are asked in full each time. Once

the information from several people has been collected, group work on compiling results

can offer further opportunities for internalising or structuring the grammar patterns. Such

structuring requires learners to manipulate the language so that they produce the form

with attention and accurately.

b. Information gap activities

Activities with information gaps are often found in course books to practise oral skills.

Again, with just small adjustments, they can be used with grammar goals rather than

oral fluency goals. For example, children work in pairs; each has a calendar covering

the same month, but with different entries (this is the ‘gap’). Without looking, again

perhaps pretending to talk by phone, the children are to find a time when they are both

free, and can then decide what they want to do, e.g. go swimming, go to the cinema, go

shopping. In finding out when they are both free, they should be encouraged to use the

language form being practised, e.g. Shall we meet on Friday? No, sorry. On Fridays, I

go to the library.

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c. Drills and chants

Drills offer language and involvement support to children when used to practise new

language, because the child can listen to others to pick up bits that she or he is unsure

about, and drills can be lively and fun if the pace is kept up.

Repetition drills,in which the children repeat what the teacher says, can help in

familiarising a new form, but substitution drills are the ones that offer more for grammar

structuring. In a substitution drill, the learners may transform the teacher’s line, as here

from you want to to let’s:

T: You want to play football.

PS: Let’s play football.

T: You want to go swimming.

PS: Let’s go swimming.

(Doff 1988)

Alternatively, the teacher may use single words or pictures as prompts for pupils to

produce a sentence:

T: Cinema.

PS: Let’s go to the cinema.

T: Football.

PS: Let’s play football.

(Doff 1988)

In each case, the pupils are doing grammatical work in their minds to produce their line

in the drill, and this may help structuring.

Reflection

Design an information gap activity to practise the patterns ‘who is

he?/where does he live?/what does he do?/what’s he doing right

now?

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3.4.4 Proceduralising activities

At this point, we want learners to automatise their use of the grammatical form so that it

is available quickly and effectively for use in communication. Task design must ensure

that grammar is essential for achieving task goals and that some attention to accuracy

is required, but the idea is that attention to accuracy can gradually be relaxed as it

becomes automatic.

a. Dictogloss

The basic idea of dictogloss is that the teacher reads out a text several times, the pupils

listen and make notes between readings, and then reconstruct the text in pairs or small

groups, aiming to be as close as possible to the original and as accurate as possible.

During the collaborative reconstruction, learners will talk to each other about the

language, as well as the content, drawing on making their internal grammatical

knowledge. Through this talk, a pupil may learn from another about some aspect of

grammar.

Summary

The teacher can probably best help to develop children’s grammar in the foreign

language, not by teaching grammar directly, but by being sensitive to opportunities for

grammar learning that arise in the classroom. A grammar-sensitive teacher will see that

language patterns that occur in tasks, stories, songs, rhymes and classroom talk, and

will have a range of techniques to bring these patterns to the children’s notice, and to

organise meaningful practice. To do this well requires considerable knowledge and

teaching skills.

The End …good luck with your activities!

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