Knowledge about Language and Testing
DATA ANALYSIS
The Testing of Writing Skills
All twelve questionnaire respondents, who said that they used KAL in the testing process, spoke of the awareness of communication being a process. This knowledge is extended to writing, one medium of communication. According to one teacher, “the students cannot be expected to accurately write an essay, especially using a language in which they lack proficiency, in one quick step.” In further discussions during the interviews, three teachers disclosed that students must be taught that writing is a process. They adhere to the notion that this process “involves a series of steps…directed toward the particular end of expressing on paper what the writer feels or thinks about a subject” (McCuen & Winkler 1998, p.3). These steps include prewriting, writing, editing/revising and rewriting.
The class visits confirmed that some teachers were in fact trying to teach process writing. The grades 7-9 students had their journals from which they often took ideas for essay writing. The teachers examined the journals periodically, but they were not assessed for content, correct use of grammar or spelling. The teachers just checked to see that the students were indeed writing. Note would be taken of the students’ progress in the use of certain features of language development, such as sentence structure and vocabulary development, but no grades would be awarded.
In two of the classes visited, the students were engaged in peer evaluation of drafts. At the time of the visit the students of one class were checking for the relevance of the ideas in the essay. The other class was checking drafts for grammar and spelling errors. The groups were commended on how effectively they were able to identify problems in the draft copies.
Another area of KAL that was highlighted by the teachers was the need to create meaningful contexts for writing. This was seen in the use of journal writing described above and the thematic approach to writing. The students in one class, for instance, were focusing on the theme heroes. They composed posters, poems, songs, letters and stories based on past and present Jamaican heroes and heroines. Again, peer and teacher evaluations were done. An added feature to this exercise however, was self-evaluation. These evaluations led to the creation of improved versions.
