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EVALUATE WRITING IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE
Ardjana Braja
(Albania)
The workshop intends to answer these questions:
• Which are the main problems in writing in a foreign language?
• How much it affects the clearness of the questions, teaching, the preciseness of the criteria in the correction and the evaluation in the results of the writing?
• Which are the causes that are linked with the correction and the evaluation of the written tasks in Albanian schools?
The workshop is concentrated in a specific way in the high schools of Albania whose characteristics reflect more this problem.
The long teaching experience of a foreign language, the contact with many teachers of foreign language, the observations in many dif ferent schools have deeply increased our belief that the practices to evaluate the skills in writing in Albania are far from those suggested by the researchers and studies in this field nowadays. The results of this workshop will help the teachers to improve evaluation and teaching activities, and even the methodologists to define the most efficient methodology to improve the skills of writing in a foreign language.
Keywords: evaluation, correction, writing, teaching, teacher and student.
To answer these researched questions we have determined the subjects of the study and we have selected the part that represents the population taken in the study. The part is selected from the high schools of Elbasan, a city in which the Italian and French language have a widely spread. The subjects of this study are the pupils, teachers and the inspectors of DAR (Directorates of Education). The study is focused especially in the high schools of Elbasan, whose characteristics reflect more the problems and concerns. The students are selected from the high schools of Elbasan especially from “Kostandin Kristoforidhi”, “Mahir Domi”,”Mahmud e Ali Cungu”. In the group of teachers are included young and old teachers with a lot of teaching experience of
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Italian and French and also teachers of the Albanian language and literature. In a total out of 721 students, for the purposes of the study are selected a section from 256 students of the high schools of the city that belong to the third grade of the high schools.
To achieve the points of the study there are used the methods: the study and the use of theoretical contributions in this field, observations, interviews, questionnaires and experiments. We are supported widely in the studies and research of the most distinguished Albanian and foreigner methodologists and linguistics especially Italian and French ones. The observations are made in cooperation with the Directorate of Education of Elbasan and schools directorates observed and the teachers too. A great help for us have the been the classes planned in the program of the students of Italian and French who are having their studies at the Master level.
To make it more practical we have chosen to do the survey through a questionnaire.
According to Allaire (1988) the questionnaire gives a higher opportunity to get the answers and a better guarantee of the quality of collected information. The survey through the questionnaire is used from many researchers such as Bibeau (1987) Prefontaine (1992) the Group of DIEPE (1995) and where we are based to work out our measured instruments.
The effort to investigate that is seen in every researcher we are dealing with. The descriptive research is the questionnaire that consists in the collection of the information starting from representative part through the questionnaire and the interviews. In this workshop the questionnaire is considered as a mean of the collection of the information. The idea that the workshop aims to describe is a complex phenomena that is linked with a lot of ingredients and their interactions. Oppenheim (1992) suggests to be clear in order not influence the ideas and the attitude of the person that is interviewed.
Our answers were that this workshop permits to get much more information in teaching and learning the skills of writing and getting out the results that are nearer to reality. According to Allaire (1988)”the researcher should pay attention to make clear to those that are answering that the correctness is the main demand and a negative answer is as worthy as a positive answer too”. The author counts on a lot of advantages according to the questionnaire. Oppenheim (1992) thinks
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that the researcher should show respect to the people that are questioning because are these people that are helping him to go further in his research. Moreover he should make clear that his success depends on their sincerity and spontaneity. Making them responsible for what they will do will be easier to believe in their cooperation and in their real answers. For that reason the questionnaire starts with a clearness to ensure the participants that the context of their papers should be absolutely confidential. Comparing with the direct observation the higher quality of the survey through the questionnaire consists in its flexibility.
According to Kruidenier and Clement (1986) the survey through the questionnaire has a meaning only when the people answer real and more sincerely too. To avoid a high percent of abstention, the research is based on the suggestions of Gardner (1985, 1983) who says that we should make clear to the people interviewed that there aren’t right answers. Each question should be followed by the instructions. The emphasis is put on that there are no good or bad answers and the anonymity is kept while analyzing the information. We have been supported even by Allaire (1988) who says: [...] the first question that a researcher should do to himself is that if the information which should be collected by this through technique is exactly the one needed to answer the objectives of the research.
In the function of the workshop there are done some experiments according to the causes of the workshop.
The first experiment: It would be given a similar topic with that given in the previous days by the teacher but the pupils are instructed for that they will write and are determined clearly the criteria of the correction and the evaluations. The results will be compared.
The second experiment: The pupils analyze initially the written works of the good students. It will be the duty of the pupils to emphasize the important elements of the writing as the length of the writing, the quality of the paragraphs, the expressed ideas, the organization of the text, the use of the language etc. The work is done in groups and pupils are free to express their ideas and thoughts .the results will be analyzed.
The third experiment: We have taken written works by a teacher from another school, they will be written without correction by other teachers of different schools. This workshop is done with written work from the school which is taken in the research. With this experiment we compare the way of the correction between teachers and we can see the
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similarity of the evaluation of the first teacher with the others. In this analysis we can see if for the same work the evaluations and the corrections are the same or different.
The fourth experiment: Pupils will be given written works where are used only labels or symbols. The pupils correct with each other correcting the mistakes and rewriting the work. The pupils will be given written text with mistakes where students will be encouraged to correct by themselves following the instructions of the teacher.
We have asked our colleagues who teach in the schools that are in the study to do a written activity with pupils.
We are referred to the written works that are used a lot in our schools dictated by the teaching program and given by the teacher and those that are closer to the writing skills in order to posses the certificate of the language. We have to remind you that to posses a certificate in the written exam an important role takes part an argumentative and descriptive topic, and a formal and informal letter.
The used methodology helped us to give the answers clearly: which are the main problems in the writing of a foreign language?
In the most part of the works that were taken as part of the analysis it was noticed that the way of writing in a foreign language from Albanian pupils was followed by mistakes of the forms and the context too. The mistakes are connected with morphology, syntax, writing and lecture too. In the written works it is not clear which are the opening and closing remarks.
They had used paragraphs which were not connected with each other. They had used sentences which were not necessary or unimportant that can be avoided: the examples and the arguments which were given to support the ideas were not completed .There were a lot of problems with the coherence and chronological order of the work. A lot of words were repeated time after time and the sentences were too long, uncertainty in writing and sometimes the context didn’t match with the topic.
How effects the clearness of the questions, the correctness of the criteria of the correction and the evaluation in the results of the writing?
For that was used the first experiment. We compared the results of a topic given by the teacher with another that was formulated clearly and we raised up the criteria of the correction and the evaluation. We saw the differences in results from the first work to the second .In fact we thought that in the second work the results would be higher for all the
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pupils based on the clearness of the request and the awareness of the students of the way of the correction and the evaluation. In general the results are higher in the second work but we see lower results in some students. The thing that we recognized in the second work was that the mark was not fully accompanied with symbols or signs. We think that this way of evaluation is more objective because it is based on the criteria that are known by the teachers and by the pupils too. In the second topic it was noticed more concentration by the students and more serious evaluation for the work. Nearly all the pupils of the schools we analyzed welcomed even the putting of the table of the correction and the evaluation that accompanied the paper where the topic was.
We judge that the clearness of the request, the correction and the evaluation help for an objective evaluation. In this way the pupil is clearer for which he is going to write, but from the other side he is assessing his strong and weak points and works with determination to improve his weak points where is necessary.
Which are the causes that are connected with the correction and the evaluation of written works in Albanian schools?
In the high schools the correction is joined with some problems “often is intended to identify the competence of the writing with the written and morphologic preciseness and as a result is underestimated the preciseness of grammar and the ability to organize the text according to the aspect of the coherence and cohesion. The habit to encourage pupils to write text which answers the type of the text determined is not almost spread and that is linked closely with a narrow vision of the competence of the limited writing mainly with the exactness of the form. The requests of nowadays are to posses the pragmatic skills and to formulate a text where is defined the destination and the communicative situation. That researches the need that expressing through writing to be the aim of the teaching and the pupils must be exercised through the programmed activities ad hoc. In the written work taken as analysis it is noticed corrective forms which are the same in all the schools. Often it is underlined the wrong word or it is written the correct one until wrong sometimes it is seen a question mark or something not understandable.
The corrections are only for some special words not for the structure of the sentence that in most cases is not a good one. In the final comment rarely is written about the organization of the text, its coherence and cohesion. Whereas the attention is focused more on the qualities
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to express the form, but the thing that impresses us much is that in none of the corrected written works are not found the forms of the correction which encourage self-correction. The comments written by the teacher do not encourage pupils to write better and to improve their work. Analyzing the written work of the pupils of the many grades of the school we judge that an important role plays the comments and the written evaluations of the teacher in the corrected work.
The notes that the teacher uses are connected more with the mistakes that the pupil does and the quality of the work. There were a few teachers who had written positive signs about the work or the signs which encourage self-correction, there were a lot of teachers who underlined the wrong word or who had written along side of the wrong word .The teachers have given valuable thoughts of the questionnaire according to the improvement of the skills of writing of the pupils. It needs a flexible program, the others evaluate the reading, exercising at home and in the class and also emphasizing the frequency of the correction.
Most of the teachers think that their continuous qualification is important. In fact the aim of the written works as each evaluation that is done during the period of the school must be diagnostic and formulated, it should help the pupils to understand their mistakes and to show the ways of the reflection and the work to improve their results. Time after time pupils are invited to read what they had written, to recopy the text with the correction and to reread it again, but in most times the formulated dimension is absent from the correction. It seems clearly that the aim of the correction for some teachers is just to put a mark to his students. At last the thing that attracts the attention the different forms of the correction. The codes of the communication between the teacher and the pupil done in the text are different and not communicative between them. The third experiment makes clear that the evaluations of the same written work differ from each other. This experiment after the comparisons of the corrections by different corrections emphasize the idea that if it corrected with the criteria of the correction and evaluation then as a result even the evaluation will be objective and closer to reality. A lot of factors explain the difficulties of the teaching of the expression in written form: from one side the inner conditions and the other side the outer conditions of the Albanian educative system .The inner conditions are those related with the preparation of the teachers and the context of the program and the outer conditions are related with
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the absence of the pedagogic supports and the big numbers of pupils in the class.
Most of the teachers haven’t had the opportunity to be specialized for the evaluation of the skills of writing. We have contested that most of the teachers didn’t have necessary knowledge according to the process of writing and to evaluate the writing form. From most types of written work teachers prefer the essay even though its frequent usage. According to the teachers the tables of the correction are used, but they are not made clear to the students initially.
In fact even this thing was clear to the questionnaire; we didn’t see it clear or explained in the hours of the observation.
According to the data details most of the teachers give advance with 60points the context and with40 points the language. All the teachers use the evaluation with the marks but the same teachers time after time use the evaluations even with the points. The teachers say that they use marks followed with plus or symbols but rarely use the forms to encourage the self correction and self evaluation. Related to the desire to use another way of the correction teachers have different thoughts some prefer the system with points the other with signs and the others say they are hopeless for that.
Conclusions
• It is very important that the request of the written works be very clear, should not cause confusion at the pupils and increase the concentration at the most important elements;
• If the criteria of the correction and evaluation are expressed the pupils are much more aware of their evaluation and this evaluation is objective;
• Use forms of the correction and evaluation that encourage self correction and self evaluation;
• Find the instruments to develop completely a text competence respecting coherence and cohesion;
• Encourage the cases of writing and reading.
• Create the opportunities to collect, to show the results of the written works, to show and give a critical evaluation of the work, to use creative writing, to analyze newspapers articles of different types such as letters, interviews.
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