tailieunhanh - WRITING ENGLISH ESSAYS WITHIN DOMINANT DISCOURSES IN MALAYSIAN SCHOOLS*

The aim of this document is to provide guidance for teachers, and learning support assistants where appropriate, on ways to teach writing skills in order to help learners to become more effective writers. This document is designed to raise awareness of the many individual skills that a learner has to grasp (including consideration of the content of their writing, the ideas, arguments or plot) when learning to write. Faced with such multiple challenges it is not surprising that young learners, or those identified by school data as underattaining in literacy, make many errors when they try to do all this at once. This document suggests, therefore, that attention needs to. | Jurnal Pendidik dan Pendidikan Jil. 21 23 45 2006 WRITING ENGLISH ESSAYS WITHIN DOMINANT DISCOURSES IN MALAYSIAN SCHOOLS Tan Kok Eng School of Educational Studies Universiti Sains Malaysia 11800 USM Pulau Pinang Malaysia Abstract Writing is one of the four English language skills taught and tested in the education system in Malaysia. At the upper secondary school level students write a variety of text types most of which conform to examination genres. Given a learning context that is examination-driven and teacher-centred and a writing curriculum that is non-negotiable how do students accomplish their writing tasks Embedding the classroom in an institutional and a larger sociocultural context this paper demonstrates how some students responded to teacher instructions such as Read understand interpret do and Strictly no discussion please. Data were taken from student interviews teacher interviews students written products and classroom observations of writing lessons over the second half of the school year. Findings from the study show the students compliance with their teacher s expectations and writing requirements for school and examination purposes. It was a strategy to get it done but within school sanctions. In out-of-school contexts students were engaged in other contrasting types of writing in English which served other social purposes. Abstrak Menulis atau mengarang ialah satu daripada empat kemahiran bahasa Inggeris yang diajar dan diuji dalam sistem pendidikan di Malaysia. Pada peringkat menengah atas pelajar menulis pelbagai jenis teks kebanyakannya mengikut keperluan peperiksaan. Dalam suatu konteks pembelajaran yang berpandukan peperiksaan dan berpusatkan guru serta suatu kurikulum menulis yang mesti diikuti bagaimanakah pelajar menyempurna-kan tugasan menulis mereka Dengan meletakkan bilik darjah dalam satu konteks institusi dan sosiobudaya yang lebih besar kertas kerja ini menunjukkan bagaimana pelajar memberi respons kepada instruksi guru seperti .