IMPLEMENTATION OF DIFFERENTIATED INSTRUCTIONS (DI) AMONG ESL LOW PROFICIENCY STUDENTS

The reality of learning a language is that students are diverse in terms of capability to grasp the language lessons given. Cognitive development, socio-cultural background, gender, motivation are a few factors that affect their ability to learn a target language. Thus, this paper is concerned about the effectiveness of Differentiated Instructions (DI) in catering low proficiency students so that they could excel in their ESL writing tasks and their perceptions of DI in improving their writing skills. A study was conducted in a sub urban primary school in Sandakan, Sabah, Malaysian Borneo. There were 29 respondents altogether from a class of Standard 4 which are categorized as low proficiency students based on their LINUS results in the previous year. The data were collected using mixed methods and, an analysis and discussion about the effectiveness of DI were done by comparing students’ pre-test and post-test scores and their perceptions towards DI were concluded from the interview and observations throughout the study. A questionnaire adapted from VARK questionnaire version 7.0 was used to determine students’ learning preferences before they were divided into three groups to undergone the DI strategies. The results of the study show there are some improvements in students’ writing as shown in the post-test results. Their behaviours in writing classes also have changed from being anxious to being confident at the end of the study. In general, it seems that DI could be used as one of the approach to help primary schools’ students to excel their ESL writing lessons. Besides, teachers should also take into consideration of implementing DI not only for writing skills but also other language skills.