Are EFL Teachers in a Position to
Assess our students writing?
By Enrique Rojas R.
Assessment is commonly defined as the act of making a judgment about something. In the
case of educational assessment, it is the process of documenting, usually in measurable terms, knowledge, skill, attitudes, and beliefs. But when we come to defining assessing writing in a
school setting, for students of English as a foreign language, we find that it
means a lot of different things for most teachers.
Conception and association
of ideas, creativity, imagination, organization, word choice, sentence fluency,
usage of correct structures, conventions, presentation,
spelling, coherence and cohesion are among the many things that teachers
consider and grade when confronting a student’s piece of writing. The real
problem is that the great majority of them have not provided much instruction
to their learners about those aspects.
This evaluating activity
does not respond to formative assessment since most frequently there is no real
plan or follow up system to help improve students’ writing. It is rather usually
considered another tool in grading the learners‘ work to provide the
institution with records. The problem is that it could not be considered
summative assessment either, since they are evaluating abilities that were not
properly taught and capacities that were not enhanced during the lessons.
It happens that
teachers evaluate fluency, elegance and cohesion from students that have never
been instructed about what a simple sentence is, let alone complex sentences or
have never heard about the different types of independent or depending clauses.
Of course, instruction should go from the simple to the complex. The question
is then how many students have a working knowledge of such basic things as
punctuation or capitalization.
Textbooks face the
issue simply presenting different types of written exchanges, e.g. an email to
a friend, an application for a job or to a university, a letter of complaint to
a store, etc. and prompting students to imitate its structure and vocabulary.
But, come on, can this seriously be considered teaching how to write?
The fact is that the absolute
great majority of learners have never heard of a topic sentence; don’t have a
clear idea about what a paragraph is or which are the parts of a composition.
And that is because we, teachers, don’t tell them about it. And neither do
their Spanish teachers, for that matter.
Then we are admired
when students that find their way into the university can’t write. Good readers
produce good writers, but that is not the case of the majority. So it should
not come as a surprise they are quite inept to express their thoughts
effectively in writing.
So we should start by
devising a good plan for teaching our students how to write going from the
simple and basic to the more sophisticated concepts, and then improve it
gradually with the help of formative evaluation.
Then we will be able to
assess them as they go through the different steps of producing written
communication mainly with the help of rubrics devised for every step of their
learning.
Now your turn:
What do you think? Do
you agree or disagree with this viewpoint?
How do you usually teach and assess
Writing in your classes?
BIOGRAPHICAL DATA
Graduated in
Journalism at the PUCP, Peru, Enrique Rojas R. holds a MA in Journalism and MA
in Inter American History from Southern Illinois University, USA; an MA in
Literature from University of the Americas, Puebla, Mexico, all the coursework
for a MA in TEFL at Universidad de Piura, Peru and BA in Education from
Universidad Federico Villarreal. He has also obtained Certificates of
Proficiency in English both from Cambridge University and the University of
Michigan and the Diploma for EFL Teachers from Universidad del Pacifico. He is
an Oral Examiner for the Cambridge University exams and has been awarded the
title Expert in E-Learning from Asociacion Educativa del Mediterraneo and Universidad
Marcelino Champagnat. He has worked as a professor in universities in Peru,
Mexico and the United States; as a newscaster and a producer in radio and
television stations in the United States and Mexico, and as a writer and editor
in daily newspapers of the same countries. He has been in the staff of CIDUP
for 18 years teaching English and Spanish specializing in International Exams,
English for Business, ESP and Teacher Training. He has been a speaker in every
Congress of English for Special Purposes organized by Centro de Idiomas de la
U.P. He is also a member of its Research Area.
