Want to create a website of your own?

Get Unique Money Making WordPress Blog

Classroom Observation and Analysis of Learners' Writing Samples

1.3.2 Analyses and Observations
Having obtained the teachers’ views regarding the teaching and testing of written English, further corroboration was sought by direct observation of classroom teaching, and analysis of learners’ classwork notebooks and test papers.

a) Learner’s Classwork
A number of composition note-books of learners in different schools were checked.  The following observations speak for themselves:

All the learners in a single class had written identical compositions which match word for word. Even in letter-writing, including the address and the names of persons involved, all the learners had written the same letter. (Appendix 4 a).

Most of the passages were copies from the course book with of without minor changes (Appendix 4b& c- a page from the coursebook and a page from a learner’s classwork note-book are placed together for easy comparison).

Appendix 4b has a page from the course book - lesson 8, ‘Men at work’.  The composition on ‘A Postman’ written by a learner matches word for word the coursebook lesson, which is checked and signed by the teacher.  The teacher who said that he would not allow learners to copy, (while answering the interview question) has awarded eight marks out of ten this learner.

No mistakes are marked in any of the compositions.  A score out of ten is given to each learner.   No other comments are written in the note-book by the teacher.  In some of the notebooks it can be observed that write ups with less mistakes have been given more marks than those with less mistakes (Appendix 4a).  In the learner’s composition on ‘Visit to the Zoo’ (Appendix 4c) not even spelling mistakes are marked.  No other comments are also written by the teacher. Learner’s attempt to write a composition based on the course book lesson has led to a number of erroneous constructions, some of which are listed below.

(Appendix 4 C )

The teaching in a normal classroom situation is mostly text-based. The meanings of new word are written in Gujarati by the learners in the coursebook itself, and the answers to the questions are underlined and marked in the coursebook (Appendix5).  The questions are also sometimes written in the coursebook. For example, in Appendix 5, page 36 of the coursebook Lesson, the following question and answer can be seen:

(1) Where was a magic show?  

One Saturday there was a magic show in our school.
 
b) Test papers
The format of the question paper set for the annual examination at class IX and X level is more or less the same (Appendix 6a and b).  There are questions based on the content of the lesson, to be answered briefly.  Sometimes the questions are abrupt and give no indication as to the them of lesson from which they are taken.
Example: 

Where was the telephone?  Who used it?      

Who are meeting on Sunday evening?          (Appendix 6a)   

For composition work they are asked to write a paragraph on any one of the four topics given, which include topics like ‘The Postman’ that have been worked out as part of classwork.  Other items testing grammar and vocabulary are also text based where even the sentences for discrete items like ‘Fill in the blanks’ are lifted form the coursebook lesson.

The analyses of the test papers reveal the fact that the test focus is on memory of the content of the coursebook lessons.  A learner who has mechanically studied the coursebook lessons could write the entire paper including grammar and composition with a considerable amount of success. Memorisation with or without understanding the meaning, could also help the learners obtain good grades.  This reflects on the teaching practices where most of the time is spent in preparing the learners for examination.  Teachers are worried about ‘completing the course’  and learners spend  a lot of time in learning to answer the ‘ important questions’,  usually given to them  as part  of revision   work  in schools.