Exploring Match Plate's potential in aiding pupils' writing skills

Abstract

Teaching of writing skills has become a growing concern for teachers with the implementation of CEFR aligned curriculum in recent years. Lack of relevant materials and resources is one of the contributing factors to this concern. Furthermore, writing skill acquisition could pose a challenge in the primary ESL classroom. Therefore, this study was conducted in a suburban primary school with the aim to discover Match Plate's potential in aiding pupils' writing skills. This research employed action research as the research design, and utilised three data collection methods, namely a pre-test and post-test, questionnaire and observation checklist. A total of ten participants were involved in this study. The findings revealed that there is a positive increment in the post-test results as compared to the pre-test results. Based on the survey questionnaire, most participants showed positive perceptions towards the use of Match Plate. Additionally, the data gathered from the observation checklist showed that participants were able to build sentences using Match Plate. Hence, the findings suggest that Match Plate shows potential to support pupils' mastering of writing skills. Apart from that, pupils' positive learning attitude could be observed throughout the treatment period. Thus, it is highly recommended for teachers to resort to alternative teaching aids for language teaching.