Language Learning Support Section

Abstract

R & D Background

Purpose & Design

Action Plan

Findings & Analysis

Implications

Remarks

> Action Plan

Action Plan

In addition to teachers’ initial observations, regarding students’ daily work, the team administered a
pretest to gather more solid information about students’ problems in writing at the beginning of the
term. Students were asked to write a story of about 80 words. The assessment results showed students’
strengths and weaknesses in writing a narrative text. From this initial analysis, the teachers were able
to draw specific information that in turn enabled them to plan and implement strategies aimed at
addressing the issues identified.

	Strengths	Weaknesses
Content	Some students showed some attempts to elaborate ideas (e.g. giving reasons or describing feelings).	Some students wrote a very brief ending. Some texts were too lengthy as there was a lot of irrelevant information.
Language	Some students were able to use past tense correctly. Some were able to incorporate the use of dialogues into the narrative text.	Many students only employed a limited range of vocabulary and verb forms. Tenses, spelling and punctuation mistakes and malformed sentences were observed.
Organisation	Only a few students attempted to use a small range of cohesive devices (e.g. so, but, because, and). A few were able to write the narrative text in paragraphs.	Most students did not use any cohesive devices or used them inappropriately. Numerous students compacted all ideas into one single paragraph.

After looking at the analysis of the pretest result, the work team decided to adopt a set of teaching
strategies to help support students with necessary writing skills and equip them with writing tools.
Teachers also looked at students’ products of the writing tasks of the textbook units throughout the year
to gather information about students’ writing performance to inform teaching and learning.

	A four-step approach to teach writing

To make sure there was adequate and balanced exposure to different text types, teachers had
chosen 8 text types (both fiction and nonfiction) as the teaching focus of the year.

	Text types	Textbook	Unit	Writing task description
Fiction	Personal recount	Book 5A	Unit 1	Writing about a lucky day / an unlucky day Writing about a visit to my favourite place in Hong Kong
	Story	Reading Workshop: Super Dog	/	Writing a story map and a new ending of the magic adventure of a dog
	Diary	Book 5A	Unit 2	Writing a diary page about an outing
	Fairy tales & fables	G.E. Ex: The Ugly Duckling	/	Writing a new ending to the fable ‘The Tortoise and the Hare’
Nonfiction	Personal letter	Book 5A	Unit 2	Writing a letter of advice on personal problems
	Email	Book 5A	Unit 6	Writing a letter of reply to your cousin, telling him where you have brought your mom to on the Mother's Day.
		Book 5A	Unit 5	Writing a reply email to father about what you have prepared for Mom's birthday party
	Personal description	Book 5A	Unit 7	Writing profiles of famous athletes
	Exposition	Book 5B	Unit 6	Giving advice to a friend on good eating habits

The unit planning example introduced below shows the teaching design and arrangements for a
unit about places in Hong Kong. Teachers made use of a familiar and interesting cartoon to set the
scene for the learning of the whole unit. Students were asked to write a reply to their cousin Victor,
telling him where they took their mom on Mother's Day.

The tables below show the planning and implementation of Unit 6.

Module: Happy Days Unit 6 Fun in Hong Kong
Overall learning objectives of the unit
Vocabulary	Language forms and Communicative Functions
the tourist attractions in Hong Kong activities that people do when they visit these attractions	asking questions in simple past using “how many” and present perfect tense to ask about frequency and talk about experiences giving answers in the past tense and the present perfect tense

To equip students with necessary knowledge and skills to accomplish the main task, teachers designed
suitable scaffolding activities to help consolidate student learning before entering the application stage.

1. Fun Dictation


a) the worksheet that students used for the fun dictation		c) Students did peer checking
b) Student wrote down the names of the Hong Kong attractions with the picture given

2. Bingo Game
Before playing the traditional bingo game, teachers asked students to brainstorm as many Hong Kong
attractions as they could. Students then filled in a 9-box grid from the pool of words they had come up
with for the bingo game. Teachers deliberately integrated more peer and group work throughout the
pre-writing stage so that students could interact and learn from each other.Increased student
interaction and cooperation contributed to more productive and student-centred lessons.


Students worked together.	Students also tried to look for words from their personal word bank.

3. Group interview

Group interview

After all these, group interviews were done so that students could be engaged in a speaking activity.
The students carried out a group interview to apply the language items learnt in the unit.

4. Writing an itinerary- Wanting to know more about different places in Hong Kong,
you decided to take your mom out on Mother’s Day. Write a simple itinerary.
After activating students’ prior knowledge (of the English names of different places around Hong Kong)
and providing students with an opportunity to interact with classmates about the places they had been to,
the teachers helped students start to shape their letter by asking them to complete an itinerary with
possible places to go to and activities to do there.

Group discussion

The completion of this itinerary provided the basic content of the letter, so the next step involved
familiarising the students with the format and features of an informal letter. Since students were asked
to reply to Cousin Victor’s letter, teachers showed them the letter that Victor had previously sent to them.

5. Reading an informal letter
Last week, your mom had a very happy Mother’s Day. Your cousin Victor sent a letter to
you asking how you spent Mother’s Day with your family. Read his letter and answer the
questions which follow.

$F:\main tasks unit 6\004.jpg$

Teachers taught students the format using Victor’s letter. They also read through the letter together to
establish what students had to respond to. They had to talk about what plans they had for the summer
holiday in the first paragraph, then move on to talk about where they went and what they did on Mother's
Day.

After that, to revisit the sentence structures that they might use in the main task, students played a
sentence making game in groups.

By then, the students had revised relevant vocabulary and grammar, established what to write about and
had the knowledge of the relevant text type features. However, they did not know how to organise these
ideas systematically into paragraphs. Teachers then provided students with a visual framework for the
organization of ideas in the form of a graphic organiser. We also hoped that they could use it as a tool
for letter writing in the future.

6. Completing a graphic organiser to plan for the writing

With the graphic organiser, the basic format of an informal letter was once again reinforced. Students
planned clearly the main idea for each paragraph. They also thought further to elaborate the main
ideas by providing supporting details. Students then proceeded to individual writing of the reply
.
Main task: Writing an informal letter
Write a letter of reply to Victor.Tell him where you have been to and what you did there
with your family.
Prior to the task described above, the students had already been trained to revise and edit their own
work before publishing it.

The table below summarises the objectives of the above mentioned activities and the features of the
task design as well as the corresponding skills and strategies practised.

Skills and Strategies practised	Fun Dictation	Bingo Game	Interview	Writing an Itinerary	Reading an informal letter	Reading an informal letter, fill in a graphic organiser	Main task-Writing an informal letter
Objectives	To consolidate vocabulary and structures learnt in the unit before entering the application stage of the main task.			To brainstorm for places to go and activities to do	To learn about the format of an informal letter and features. To provide an authentic context for a reply letter.	To provide a visual framework for the organization of ideas. To provide a tool for planning for letter writing in the future.	To apply the vocabulary learned in the unit. To communicate with others through letter writing.
Vocabulary	tourist attractions in Hong Kong	tourist attractions in Hong Kong activities that people do when they go to these attractions asking questions in simple past		tourist attractions in Hong Kong activities that people do when they visit these attractions	the tourists attractions in Hong Kong activities that people do in the attractions	the tourists attractions in Hong Kong activities that people do in the attractions	the tourists attractions in Hong Kong activities that people do in the attractions
Language Forms and Communicative Functions	/	Using “how many” and present perfect tense to ask about experience and frequency Talking about past actions with past tense and experiences with present perfect tense		Using simple present tense to talk about plans	Describing past actions with past tense and present perfect tense	Describing past actions with past tense and present perfect tense	Describing past actions with past tense
Language Skills	Listening -Identifying target vocabulary	Speaking -Open an interaction by eliciting response by asking questions -Maintain an interaction by asking and responding to other’s opinions -Close an interaction by using simple formulaic expression e.g., Thank you.		Writing Skills -gather and share information and ideas by using strategies such as brainstorming, questioning and interviewing	Reading Skills -recognise the format and language features of personal letters -skim a text to obtain a general impression and the gist with teacher support	Writing Skills: -Provide personal ideas and information based on a visual framework. -Present writing using appropriate layout and visual support such as illustration and tables.	Writing Skills: -use appropriate formats, conventions and language features when writing letters