The first English language activity that I choose is reading aloud.

Reading aloud means read loudly with clear voice, intonation and pronunciation. Reading aloud helps pupils in their second language acquisition in terms of learning how to pronounce words correctly. In this activity, either the teacher or the pupils can do reading aloud. There are many ways to do reading aloud. One of the ways is teachers read aloud to pupils and they just listen and enjoy the stories. In reading aloud to young children, it is important for teachers to use body gestures, different voices and intonation so that they can understand the story better. The other way is teachers can choose few pupils to read the text aloud by themselves after they have listened to the text read. This will make sure whether the pupils are really listening while the teacher is reading. Actually, it depends on the teachers to decide on how they want to conduct the reading aloud activity in their classroom. The second language activity that I want to propose to the English Language Department is teaching grammar through songs. Teaching grammar through songs means teachers will use songs to teach grammar to children. Grammar is one of the most difficult components to teach to children and it is hard to make them understand the rules of grammar in English. So, this activity will provide variety for English teachers in their classroom. As we know, songs are very appealing to young pupils. By using songs in teaching grammar, I think the lesson would be more interesting, meaningful and effective to the pupils. The third activity that I want to propose is fun poetry activities for the pupils. Fun poetry activities are including poems, jingles, rhymes, songs and word games. All these fun poetry activities are aimed for teachers to focus on pupils phonemic awareness and phonics. As we know, phonics is one of the components in English language these days as stated in the new primary school curriculum, KSSR. So I think this activity should be useful and effective to be used by the English Language Department in my school in order to help to improve pupils performance in English. 1. Literature review

Reading aloud Reading aloud from the best of childrens stories should be a daily part of every classroom program at all levels. Listening to a story told or read aloud well is a captivating experience. Reading aloud to children frees them from the labor of decoding and supports them in becoming active listeners, totally engaged and immersed in the text (New Zealand Ministry of Education, 2003). As children create meaning from a text by making connections between what they already know and what they hear, they develop new awareness and knowledge. This is related to the theory of constructivism. Constructivism according to Piaget (1967) is a theory that tells about how human acquire knowledge and meaning through interaction between what they already know and their ideas about new information. These knowledge systems are known as schemata. In the process of learning how to read and write, learners have to play an active role; they need to construct the knowledge by themselves in the environment around them. They will improve their vocabulary by listening to new words in context and familiar words used in new ways. In the book of Effective Literacy Practice by the New Zealand Ministry of Education (2003) also stated that a great deal of implicit learning happens when children are read to. Reading aloud is appropriate for all pupils, including those who already read accurately and fluently. This activity can be used effectively with both large and small groups. Pupils who have limited experiences with books, or who are receptive rather than active learners, can gain benefit when they are read to in small groups. The teacher can encourage them to engage with the text and respond to it actively. The successfulness of a reading aloud activity depends on what books the teacher choose to be used. Basically, interesting and enjoyable books in classroom can help teachers to engage pupils to the reading session. Pictures and images in storybooks help a lot in engaging young children with the book. According to Cameron (2001), in literacy development, children respond to pictures in the book when learning so that they can put their interest to the book. In this case, the teachers role is to support their development by showing picture books and explain about it to the children. So, when the pupils enjoy the books and the reading session, they will be able to absorb the knowledge easier and understand what the book is about clearly. Teaching grammar through songs

Why do we use songs? It is because music can motivate people. People listen to music for pleasure. Teachers have for a long time recognized that they can use songs to motivate pupils and provide variety in a lesson (Hancock, 1998). Variety is important for young pupils, who often have very little internal motivation for entering a language classroom. There are many pop songs for children at this age, and all these songs can be used inside the classroom for language-learning activities. Hancock (1998) mentioned that songs can provide practice in listening skills. Warm-up work can provide a basis for pupils to make predictions before listening. Listening activities can encourage listening for gist or listening for detail. Speaking, reading and writing skills maybe involved in follow-up activities inside the classroom. There are many trends in foreign language teaching that affected young learner classrooms all over the world. Some of them are effective and suitable to be used in classrooms, where some others are giving less impact to the learners. Cameron (2001) stated three aspects of learning and teaching grammar in classrooms; teaching grammar as explicit rules, communicative approaches and focus on form. These three different views of language teaching can lead to different idea of how the learning process will look alike. Children are fast-learners; they are good in pick up correct pronunciation and do well in listening of foreign languages. However for grammar, they would not be able to reach the same accuracy as the native speakers although they have been taught in school. Without attention to the grammatical form, some problems with basic structures continue in learning foreign languages. Cameron (2001) pointed out that actually there is conflict between communicating through a language and learning a language. As stated by Pinker (1994) in Cameron (2001), grammar development does needs skilled planning of tasks and lessons, also explicit teaching. Learners need to be guided in understanding the grammatical form of foreign language before they can actually absorb the form as their internal grammar. Teaching grammar can be very difficult if the teachers do not know how to attract pupils attention to the lesson. That is why it is very important for teachers to provide variety into his or her lesson; in this case by using songs. Grammar might be a very plain and not very interesting topic for the pupils. So it is the teachers

responsibility to try to make grammar become more interesting and enjoyable to the pupils. Stories, songs, poems, jingles, word games and rhymes Rhymes are types of poems which have the repetition of the same or similar sounds at the end of two or more words most often at the ends of lines. This technique makes the poem easy to remember because children enjoy them and this is an ideal approach to be use in language learning. According to Brewster and Ellis (2002), one of the benefits of using rhymes in language learning is because they present familiar language in new and exciting forms and in a rich and imaginative context. By using rhymes in this lesson, the students will be able to learn the new words of clothes in an interesting and exciting way. As Cook (1997) stated, small children like the same stories again and again, and they like to know rhymes and songs by heart. Songs and rhymes are the best and the most natural language acquirers. Other than rhymes, word games also can be used as one of the fun activities for the pupils. The use of games in a lesson also has the same purpose as using rhyme; to make the language learning more effectively. However, there is slightly a bit difference between rhyme and games. According to Wright, Betteridge and Buckby (1984), games can help and motivate learners to stay focused to the lesson and its content. Besides, students usually do not realize the indirect process of learning that occurs when they are playing games. This is good as students will be able to apply the knowledge that they acquire from the lesson in order to play the game and win. According to the New Zealand Ministry of Education (2003), young children typically develop phonemic awareness through many experiences with oral language, especially with poems, jingles, rhymes, songs and word games. As a matter of fact, children do not have to be able to name every letter of the alphabet before they begin formal instruction in reading and writing. They do, however, need to develop phonemic awareness and understand that there is a relationship between spoken sounds and the letters that represent them. From here, we know that it is important for young children to develop their phonemic awareness. So, in this case we can use songs, rhymes, and games to help the children in developing their phonemic awareness. Three English Language Activities 1.1 Reading aloud

We call this activity as reading aloud which means reading a text loudly with clear voice and pronunciation. This activity is targeted for all pupils in the classroom. This activity can be conducted with older and younger pupils but the methods might be slightly different. There are many ways to conduct this activity. For younger pupils, usually the teacher will do the reading and pupils will just listen. Teacher will use a big book for story telling so that the pupils will be able to see the words and pictures inside the book. Teacher will sit on a stool or a small chair and pupils will sit on the floor like audience. This could be done in a special room at the school that has carpet or tiles such as TV room or multimedia room. For reading aloud with young pupils, it is important for teacher to use loud and clear voice, body gestures, imitation, correct pronunciation and intonation. All these will be able to help pupils in developing their understanding on the text or the stories read by the teacher. Furthermore, the teacher also can use some props or teaching aids to help him or her during the story telling session. This would make the reading aloud session more interesting and enjoyable to the young pupils. Using props and voice imitation will be able to attract pupils to focus on the lesson and make them engaged throughout the session. It is important to attract pupils attention during this activity because learning will occur indirectly while they are listening to the teacher and at the same time enjoying the stories read. For older pupils, teacher can use reading aloud to check on their reading proficiency and performance in English. Teacher can use reading aloud as a form of assessment for the pupils. Teacher can conduct this activity during reading lesson. Pupils will take turn to do reading aloud in front of the classroom individually or in pairs and the other will listen and check on their pronunciation. Teacher will correct them if they happen to make any mistakes while reading. As a form of assessment, it is important for teacher to make a record on pupils performance for reading aloud inside the classroom as reference for their achievement and accomplishment in reading English text. Teacher will provide some rewards for pupils who achieve certain level as a positive reinforcement.

1.2 Teaching grammar through songs

This activity is using songs to teach grammar. Songs can be used to focus on the form of the language including grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation. This activity is targeted for older learners. Firstly, the song can be used as a sample of language to be analyzed. This could involve activities such as the pupils will answer concept questions about grammar features in a song, searching the songs for antonyms or identifying certain pronunciation patterns. Secondly, the song can be used as an exercise. Pupils will be asked to do gapfills, transformations, pronunciation drills, and so on using the lyrics. In either case, the pupils can make use of the mnemonic quality of songs: the way words are much more memorable in combination with rhythm and melody. Pupils will be able to call given language forms to memory simply by singing the song mentally, and this is something people even do involuntarily. There are many activities that can be done by using songs to teach grammar. One of them is picture discussion. In this activity, pupils will need to find pictures to illustrate the song. Then teacher will ask pupils to describe the pictures and predict what the song is about for them. The other activity that could be done is word-spotting. In this activity, teacher will presents some key words from the lyric plus some not in the lyric. Then pupils will be asked to circle the words they hear, and perhaps order of the words which are in the song. Other than that, teacher also can do lexical transformation. In this activity, teacher will give pupils a copy of the text, but with words replaced by an antonym where possible. Pupils will be asked to convert the text to opposites and listen to check. Alternatively, teacher could ask pupils to prepare a transformed version of the song and perhaps sing it. They could replace words with synonyms.

1.3 Stories, songs, poems, jingles, word games and rhymes Activities that will be using stories, songs, poems, jingles, word games and rhymes are known as fun and interactive poetry activities. All these activities are targeted for younger learners but they are also applicable to older learners. There are many things that teachers could do to create a poetry-friendly environment inside their classroom. Firstly, teachers could read poetry aloud regularly. Make it as one of the regular activities inside the classroom either in the early morning or right before the pupils go back home. Teachers could and will choose a

varied selection including nursery rhymes, nonsense poems, descriptive poems and many more. Other than that, teachers also could dedicate a shelf of the class library or book corner to poetry and fill it with lots of bright new poetry books in all shapes and sizes. This would be interesting to the pupils as they will discover the beautiful world of poetry by themselves through the books in their classroom. Teachers could make pupils become familiar with these activities by applying it into the daily lesson. Teacher and pupils would play lots of word games such as tongue twisters, crosswords, secret codes and riddles. In addition, teacher could ask pupils to perform their clapping and choosing rhymes in the classroom and watch out for and collect advertising slogans and jiggles. Furthermore, the teacher should encourage pupils to respond to the poetry by talking, acting, drawing, painting and writing. At the same time, it is important for teachers to encourage parents to read poetry to their children at home. All in all, it is crucial for teachers to read and enjoy the poetry themselves. All these activities are not only designed to develop skills in speaking and listening, reading and writing, but ideas can be easily adapted to fit in with the topic that pupils are learning. 2. Recommendations and conclusion I choose these three English language activities based on readings that I had done. From my point of view, these three language activities are very effective and useful to be used at my school. The first reason is because it has been confirmed by many researchers that all these activities will be able to help pupils in developing their proficiency and performance in English. I have read many findings and it has been proven by many people. All these activities had helped others in developing their language proficiency so I am very sure that it will work at my school too. I think these activities will work at my school because nothing is impossible. Our school has the facilities needed such as big books or even the special room that has carpet such as TV room. So, reading aloud is possible to be taken into action. For teaching grammar through songs, we might have the materials inside the teaching aids room as every school has been provided with CDs that contain children songs. It is just that the teachers need to do more work in order to collect more useful materials to be used to teach grammar.

The other reason is because we as teachers, we really want our pupils to be successful in developing their English language proficiency. So, it is our responsibilities to provide as many opportunities as we can for them to learn at their best. All these activities will work at my school because we want our pupils to learn at their best. We want them to develop their proficiency and become a proficient learner. We as teachers will try our very best to help them in developing their proficiency by conducting all these activities inside the classroom to ensure that they are learning as much as possible. In conclusion, I think that all these three language activities will work at my school because we have the facilities and materials: we just need to make sure that we are responsible as it is our responsibilities as teachers to help our pupils in developing their performance in English.

3. References Cameron, L. (2001). Teaching Languages to Young Learners. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Piaget, J. (1967). Biology and Knowledge. Chicago University Press. Ministry of Education (2003). Effective Literacy Practice in Years 1 to 4. Wellington, Learning Media. Brewster, J. & Ellis, G. (2002). The Primary English Teachers Guide: Songs, rhymes and chants. Harlow: Penguin English. (pp. 162-171). Brewster, J. & Ellis, G. (2002). The Primary English Teachers Guide: Games. Harlow: Penguin English. (pp. 172-185) Cook. G. (1997). Language play, language learning. ELT Journal Volume 51/3 July 1997. Oxford University Press 1997. Wright, A., Betteridge, D. & Buckby, M. (1984). Games for Language Learning. Cambridge University Press.