The SCCEE Toolkit

This toolkit involves three main phases namely SCCEE (pronounced as ‘see’); Score, Clarity and Content, Elaboration and Example. Score, which is the assessment scale or rubric, is based on the guideline given by the Examination Syndicate (ES). Clarity is based on the sentence structures that refer to the way words are arranged to create a complete thought. Three types of sentence structures are used for this toolkit which are simple, compound and complex. CEE is a combination of Content, Elaboration and Example as a move for pupils to write their ideas based on the questions.

In Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia (SPM) Paper 2, pupils are required to write three essays. For Part 3 (Extended Writing Task), 20 marks are given: 5 for Content, 5 for Communicative Achievement, 5 for Organisation and 5 for Language. Most of the pupils could at least obtain score for Content. However, in terms of the language, some of the pupils managed to score only between 1 to 2 marks which fall into the categories of B1. Motivated by this issue, the project becomes the main guideline in helping the pupils to score more marks.

Implementation

A six-week intervention was carried out on the pupils. Throughout the period, writing lessons were integrated with grammar lessons as the teacher believes that it is the most crucial part in a pupils’ essay. As second language writers, pupils need to learn to use correct grammar. Although “content” should remain a primary focus, sentence-level errors in ESL writing require special attention too especially when idioms, sentence structure, verb forms and tenses, prepositions, articles and punctuation that violate the conventions of standardized English (Glen and Goldthwaite, 2014) could render the content incomprehensible.

Most English as a Second Language (ESL) teachers consider giving grammar feedback as favourable, if not mandatory, since grammar is emphasized in the curriculum of many schools and teachers who do not correct pupils’ grammar will be considered unprofessional (Gray, 2004). Although there are arguments against grammar correction such as by Truscott (1996) who claims that grammar correction is harmful to pupils, Hendrickson (1978) by adopting to Krashen’s (1977) ‘monitor model’, believes that error feedback helps the L2 (second language) learners to discover the function and limitations of grammatical structures and lexical forms.

This project is derived from Kemmis and McTaggart’s (1988) action research phase.

English Workshop

The SCCEE Toolkit has been used in every English workshop around Pasir Gudang District

Research-supported Evidence

The post-test has indicated an improvement in the pupils’ writing

Sharing is Caring

This strategy has been utilised by other English teachers within our school.

This resource may be downloaded and shared with your students for educational purposes

Page updated

Report abuse