Teaching Subject Verb Agreement Using Songs

CHAPTER 1

1 Introduction

During the period of British colonization in Malaya, English became the language of administration, higher education, and international affairs. Malaysia has long achieved her independence now and has progressed through a lot of charges including the change of the official language. The national language now is Bahasa Malaysia and English falls only as a second language. Due to the lack of importance stressed on English, the level of English proficiency in schools is found to be deteriorating. English teachers are urged to do something to elevate the standard of English.

A recent study by Littlewood (2000) seemed to provide interesting findings on the attitudes of Malaysian students where lots of them are not interested in learning the English language. They feel that learning the language is a burden to them. One of the reasons for this could be the traditional method employed by the teacher while teaching the language. Some teachers like to use drills in their method. They thought that by drilling, the students will learn the language quickly. However, this method will only make the students feel bored and less motivated to learn because they are learning English without context. These kinds of drills are meaningless because the students will not be using the structures learned outside the classroom. They will even feel that learning English is dread and something they do not look forward to.

English teachers can overcome this problem by discarding the traditional methods and adopt new materials or techniques in their teaching to capture the students’ interest.

The syllabus design for our Malaysian schools aims to equip pupils with the English knowledge and skills to enable them to acquire the knowledge for the present and future needs. Thus, the ability to write, apart from the reading speaking and listening skills, is essential to effective communication.

Nowadays, it is sad to say that quite a number of secondary school...