My previous English lesson is about seeking information by asking people a question. In my case, my pupils are lack of confident to speak out English words and in fact, they do not know how to read English. Therefore, I took an intiative to create an interesting and productive class activity to stimulate their willingness to speak even it is only a sentence.
Last time, I considered about my pupils' music intelligence ability by implemeting singing a song activity and this time I considered about my pupil's abiltiy to use their imagination and creativity to create a simple conversation in asking people to gather information.
Thinking of my pupils' awareness to be an English passive speaker, I made two puppet socks with my mother's help in order to carry out my English lesson. We used a pair of socks and colourful plain clothes to create two cute and simple puppets called Nini and Lola.
The one which my mother's invented...
This is my handmade work...
So, on last Thursday, I taught my pupils to talk about themselves included their names, ages and living. I also taught them to pronunce the words clearly and confidently. Sometimes, I have to translated the words in Malay, so that my pupils knew what they were talking about.
The simple conversation is should be like this:
Hello! What is your name?
Hello! My name is Nisha.
How old are you?
I am eight years old.
Where do you live?
I live in Taman Mulia.
Oh, I live in Taman Mulia too.
The problem that I confronted was my pupils did not show their interest in reading the dialogues and did not know how to pronunce the words. Their attention was distrupted by people walking outside the class and I lost hope at first trial. But somehow, when I reinforced them with the puppets' show activity, they were seemed to pay a great attention and tried to read the dialogues with a correct pronunciation. It was because I have claimed a game's rule that those who can read is the one who can play with the puppets.
The Puppets' Show Time activity was outstanding. It was unexpected thing when my volunteered pupils can manipulate the conversation by using their previous knowledge. (Their previous knowledge is exchanging greetings.) The conversation was like this:
Hello! Good morning!
Hello! Good morning!
How are you?
I am fine, thank you.
What is your name?
My name is Sarah.
What is your name?
My name is Danial.
How old are you?
I am eight years old.
Where do you live?
I live in Kampung Pechah Rotan.
Oh, I live in Kampung Pechah Rotan too.
However, there were only four participants in this acticity-those who can read English. The other 11 pupils were silent and refused to be a participant. Like I said before they did not know how to read and shy to speak English.
I was absolutely regret because I put aside their mix-ability in speaking English as a second language. Therefore, I reread my Methodology in English Teaching to find a way out to help my pupils who cannot read English and I found one. It is called word sight activity. I will use this activity about 10 minutes before I start my next lesson. I will tell you the good news after this, perhaps there will be an improvement for my pupils who cannot read English.