Errors in writing made by Malaysian rural primary school pupils

Halipah Harun,Muhammad Kamarul Kabilan

doi:10.24815/siele.v7i2.17009

Halipah Harun, Muhammad Kamarul Kabilan

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.24815/siele.v7i2.17009

Copy DOI

Abstract

This study is to identify errors made by rural primary school pupils in writing and to get information about the causes or sources of errors that lead to pupils’ writing problems. The conceptual framework concerns four types of errors committed by rural primary school pupils in writing, namely tense, spelling, and vocabulary. The study is based on Corder’s (1971) Error Analysis (EA) and Richards’ (1974) Causes or Sources of Errors as its theoretical framework. It was conducted at two rural schools with 44 pupils of Primary 5, aged 11, as the research sample. A written task was taken as the study instrument in order to answer two research questions. This study has revealed that tense is the most frequent error committed by the pupils, followed by punctuation, vocabulary, and spelling. Moreover, the pupils’ errors are caused by both interlingual and intralingual transfer. It is concerned with rural primary school settings in Kerian where the majority of the pupils use the Malay language as their medium of instruction. In addition, this study has its implication for English Language Education in Malaysia, in which it affects rural pupils’ performance especially in Primary School Achievement Test also known as Ujian Pencapaian Sekolah Rendah (UPSR) in English Writing paper. Some adjustments in the education system and the total involvement from education departments are meant to better reduce the number of low performers, especially in English writing to enhance the level of English proficiency in rural schools.

Highlights

English language teaching has started in an era where there was the implementation of English and Malay medium schools
Descriptions of the data derived from the Error Analysis (EA) were followed by interpretations and explanations about respondents’ errors and causes or sources of errors that lead to pupils making errors in their writing
Even though it cannot be generalized to all primary school pupils studying in rural areas, the highest number of frequent errors made in tense portrays that these pupils were weak in tense in the Simple Past Tense

Summary

Introduction

English language teaching has started in an era where there was the implementation of English and Malay medium schools. English subject was reachable to quite a number of populations which mainly students who went to English medium schools. Students in Malay medium schools were taught English but was very minimal. English as a subject was at its declining standard at Malay medium schools as most children did not receive adequate education of the language. The negligence of English in Malay medium schools especially in communication had a big impact on students when they entered a tertiary level of education (Musa et al 2012). The English medium school pupils were fluent in the language that brought about the high standard of English as it was practised daily as a medium of communication

Objectives

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion