The effectiveness of using wh-questions in improving the writing skill of upper primary school students in Malaysia

Writing is one of the four English language skills taught and tested in the education system in Malaysia. At the upper primary school level students write a variety of text types, most of which conform to examination genres. The ultimate goal of the English language curriculum for schools is to help learners acquire the language so that they can use it in their everyday life, to further their studies and for work purposes. However, there are things that need to focus on as not all the students are good in English especially in the writing skill. WH-question is chosen to be as one of the ways in approaching the students and to help them to improve their performance in writing. This research is done based on the fact that many students are still unable to produce sustained accurate writing by the time they leave primary school. The performance of the students in writing is worryingly low. They were unable to perform well in their Paper Two of the Ujian Penilaian Sekolah Rendah (UPSR) examination. This is because writing has always been seen as a high priority in primary schools especially when the students have to write composition of guided writing in their UPSR.