TASK 1: INDIVIDUAL WORK (30 marks)

In this atomic century, English language is a must to be mastered by the people

worldwide. Therefore, a person must at least know how to speak in English language
although it is full of grammatical mistakes. But then, the burden is now on the English
teachers where they must teach grammar to the pupils or young learners to ensure that their
English language has the meaning that can be conveyed when they are communicating with
the native speakers or other people. In Malaysia, the Ministry of Education has implemented
the special structure to develop the English language among the pupils or young learners by
propagating the new KSSR syllabus for the primary school only to develop the English
language efficiently for the young learners. Grammar teaching has many definitions and it is
defined according to the ones who have experiences in studying grammar. According to the
articles that I have read, Ellis (2006) defines grammar teaching as, Grammar teaching
involves any instructional technique that draws learners' attention to some specific
grammatical form in such a way that it helps them either to understand it metalinguistically
and/or process it in comprehension and/or production so that they can internalize it.
Teaching of grammar has made itself very important nowadays as the number of
people who are using and learning English language is developing. Despite that, there will
be some issues in the grammar teaching. The first issue which has been encountered within
an article is the problem of using the auxiliary be in the construction of sentence where the
Malaysian primary school pupils tend to make mistakes whenever they use the auxiliary be
by overusing the auxiliary verb to show that the sentence is in the past tense even though
they have used the simple past tense inflection ed for example, I was enjoyed myself at
the party. Furthermore, in the article, the author says that this issue is from the study of
primary school and secondary school. But in this critical essay, the focus is more on the
primary school pupils in Malaysia. Both the progressive auxiliary be and the copula be are
difficult structures for second language learners to acquire (Arshad Abd Samad & Hawanum
Hussein, n.d.). The statement shows that the author has the view that the second language
learners have difficulties in using the progressive auxiliary be and the linking verb be. The
progressive auxiliary be can only be as a function word and carry a little semantic meaning
such as She is running and when the be is used as function word, it will have a large
context which can be used in any fields ranging from locative expressions until nominal
predicative. (Arshad Abd Samad & Hawanum Hussein, n.d.)
The issue stated above which is about the issue in using the auxiliary be in
Malaysian primary school must be addressed by using the suitable approach. To solve this
problem, the Deductive Approach is suggested as this approach is the most appropriate one.
The deductive approach focuses on deductive thinking where the idea goes from general to
particular. (Silvia, n.d.) At first, teacher has to introduce the young learners with rules,
patterns and principles and then show them the examples. By using this approach, the
pupils will follow the grammatical rules in using the auxiliary be. According to Silvia (n.d.),
the most suitable strategy for this deductive educating is Grammar Translation Method
where the grammatical rules are often started by a clarification (usually in learners native
language) about the syntax focuses. So, the teacher has to master both the learners native
language and the target language in order to use this approach in the teaching and learning
in the classroom.
The other issue is the difficulty faced by the primary school pupils to differentiate
between the present simple and the present continuous in learning English. This issue is
from Croatia from the article authored by Sekelj and Rigo which the title is Teaching English
Grammar In Primary School. According to Sekelj and Rigo (2011), Very often the
difference between the present simple and the present continuous causes a lot of troubles
and mistakes. The authors indicate that the problem stated is faced by the primary school
pupils in Croatia because English language is the new language to them and it is a difficult
language to be mastered by the young learners.
Therefore, an approach which is suggested to address this type of issue is the Covert
Grammar Approach. In this particular approach, the teacher makes the young learners
participated in using the structure without making them to pay attention to the grammatical
rules. (Wickham, 2011) This approach lets the pupils to learn the present simple and present
continuous in the classroom without having worries on the mistakes that they tend to make.
The pupils attention is drawn to the activities that the teacher organizes for them. Not just
that, the teacher needs to provide the pupils with a suitable learning environment in order to
maintain the attention of the pupils and to use their linguistic skills. Errors should be
tolerated during the course of the activity. But they should also be noted down and dealt with
at a later session. (Wickham, 2011) However, the mistakes which the pupils make about
present simple and present continuous during the activities will be ignored by the teacher but
the teacher has to notice what mistakes that they have made and the mistakes must be
corrected at the other session. This way is to realize the pupils what mistakes that they have
done during the activities.
In summary, a teacher has to know how to address the learning issues which are
presented in their classroom by using the suitable approaches to solve the issues. Learning
issues in the classroom is a common problem because a classroom consists of different
level of pupils and they must be supplied with different needs. A teacher has to know how to
handle a diverse classroom without leaving behind any pupils.