Journal

Week 4
Throughout 4
th
weeks of teaching at the SK Gong Balai, I found that my pupils from year
three have a very lack acquisition of English vocab. This cause difficulty especially during content
delivering as it disturb pupils understanding. In regards to this, I have did some research about them
to study the root causing the problem.
Based on my observation, the main cause of the issue is that the pupils are lack of exposure
in English vocabulary. They lack of stimulus and encouragement in learning the English Language.
They feel demotivated and less interest while learning English language because they dont
understand the language due to the less acquisition of vocabulary. Apart from that, lack of drilling new
vocab and no remedial system was established to overcome the problem had put the pupils at the
same low level in vocabulary acquisition.
To overcome the problems, I had established a five minute vocabulary drilling session with
the pupils In implementing this, I had provided a Vocabulary Mini Book to each of them. During
presentation stage, I will introduces them unfamiliar vocabulary and instructs them to write it down in
the mini book. Then, I drill the words and the meaning in Bahasa Malaysia for a few times to get them
familiarised with the pronunciation and the meaning. Their task is to bring back home the mini book
and memorised it. During the next lesson, before starting the new topic or content, teacher will asks
the pupils the previous lessons vocabulary. If they fail to memorize, I will asks the pupils to memorize
it in few minutes then, I will proceed to the next lesson. Sometimes during class, I will provide ten
minute free time to give space to the pupils to memorise and ask any question regarding the
vocabulary. Then I will assess them by calling out each of them to come to me. I will read out any
vocab and they have to give the meaning in Malay and vice versa.
So far, the routine is well established and the pupils respond to it positively. They seem
enthusiastic and never fails to bring the Vocabulary Mini Book to the schools every day. To give some
feelings of accomplishment and appreciation, I will stamps their vocabulary mini book whenever they
manage to memorize all the vocabs. This is to give a sense of motivation to them.
Still, this system is still in experiment phase and I will need to monitor time by time to see
their progress. What matters most is teachers effort in making sure the pupils did their homework of
remembering the vocab at their homes or wherever they could be.