Page 126 - Amalan Terbaik dan Inovasi dalam PdP PPDMT 2021

1.0 Introduction

The English language is taught as an important second language in primary and

secondary schools in Malaysia. It is also an important communication language used by people
in this country after the Malay language. The Malaysia Prime Minister, Tun Dr. Mahathir Bin

Mohamad, said that one of the main focus in Malaysia’s education mission is to enhance
students’ skills in English besides higher order thinking skills (HOTS) and science, technology,

engineering and mathematics (STEM) education during the cabinet meeting on 17 October
2018. In order to compete with the increasingly competitive world, it is important for pupils to

master and have a firm foundation of the basic concept of grammar. However, ensuring pupils

have a good foundation of basic grammar is quite difficult and is the biggest challenge faced by
teachers nowadays. In fact, lack of knowledge in grammar, vocabulary and generic structure is

the main reason for the lack of proficiency in the target language (Kee, 2013; Ali & Yunus,

2004).

2.0 Problem of Students
The main problem was that the students were still confused with the rules concept of

preposition and how the can be used either in time, place or direction. Based on the researcher’s
observation, one of the main issues they faced was the difficulty to understand the definition of

each preposition and when to use it. Some of them can differentiate between some preposition

words such as IN, ON and AT. They can’t understand the concept and the correct way to use
the preposition. This was happened because the three prepositions (IN, ON and AT) can be used

either in preposition of time and preposition of place. For example, if the question: - Ali meets
his friend _________ 3 O’clock.

For this kind of question, pupils will be having problems to answer whether AT or ON or IN

such as Ali meets his friend in 3 O’clock or Ali meets his friend on 3 O’clock or Ali meets his

friend at 3 O’clock. These are the problems faced by most of the pupils.
One of the reasons for the lack of teaching aids that can effectively help pupils to

understand the concept of grammar in the classroom is that current teaching aids mostly teach

preposition in the form of a table and is less interactive. Most of the textbooks for primary
school pupils often used tables when teaching preposition concepts. This makes most pupils

feel easily bored and face difficulty to learn preposition well. From the researcher’s own
experience in teaching and observing other colleagues teaching preposition, it is clear that

pupils usually learn the rules better through deductive instruction. Based on this method,
teachers introduce and explain the rules and functions of grammar before expecting them to
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