5-Coloured Columns (FCC): To Write or Not to Write

Abstract

Teaching and learning of languages require multiple strategies to ensure students competence in eventually using the language independently. In the context of English language, which is considered as a second language in Malaysia, the four main skills namely listening, speaking, reading and writing are interconnected and taught with at least two of them included in every lesson plan. Learning to write sentences may sometimes be dreary and uninteresting which in turn caused the students to lose interest and unable to master it. This particular research introduced gamified writing activity using Five-Coloured Columns (FCC) that combined fun-learning and sentence construction aspects of the language to guarantee primary school students’ continuous focus in learning. Five-Coloured Columns (FCC) in the form of a table is a sentence construction tool with a twist which requires two dice to be rolled to choose words from each part of the sentence. Several formulas were also used to help the students to construct sentences correctly. Sentence construction in the form of Simple Present Tense was chosen for this research. FCC is equally applicable for other tenses with minimal modification according to needs. At the end of research, it was proven that FCC has helped the pupils to write correct sentences, keep their interest in learning and also gain confidence in using English language in the form of writing.