Firstly, this research is a study to explore the effectiveness of formative assessment in teaching English writing for only one class with 18 students at the age of 11-14 years old. As a result, the data collected cannot give a full picture of using formative assessment in teaching writing at VUS. Therefore, it will be useful if there is a larger- scale study carried out on all teenager classes and even for adult classes in order to find out whether formative assessment properly works for all classes and for every student or not.
Formative assessment is not used only for teaching writing but also for other areas of teaching foreign languages, such as grammar, reading, listening, speaking and students’ overall performance in the class. In the future, similar researches to the present one yet for other skills should be done in order to
enhance students’ motivation in learning English because it is essential for all students to be armed with “learning-to-learn” skills, which are the key for success in the 21st century.
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APPENDICES
Appendix A
STUDENT PRELIMINARY SURVEY
Dear all participants,
This survey is to investigate your perception of teaching and learning English writing in the class, which is very helpful for designing lessons for our forthcoming course. Your precious opinions will surely contribute a valuable part in making the course useful and relevant to the learners’ expectation as well as to improve learners’ writing skill.
All of your personal information recorded in this survey will be used for educational purpose and thus concealed and kept confidential.
Thank you very much for your time.
Tran Nguyen Bao Huong (TESOL 2012, USSH, Ho Chi Minh City)
PERSONAL INFORMATION
Name: How long have you been studying
English?
Age: 3-4 years 5-6 years +7 years
Gender: Male Female Where have you learned English until now?
QUESTIONS
1. Which skill do you think is important?
1a. Reading 1b. Listening 1c. Speaking 1d. Writing
2. Do you like learning English writing skill?
2a. Yes 2b. No 2c. Normal
3. What do you think about learning English writing skills? (you can choose more than 1 option)
3a. It’s interesting
3b. It’s helpful for consolidating English 3c. It’s difficult
3d. It’s boring
4. How can you evaluate your English writing skills? (you can choose more than 1 option)
4a. Very good
4b. Fairly good 4c. Average 4d. Bad 4e. Very bad
5. Which factors challenge when you write in English? (you can choose more than 1 option)
5a. Lack of vocabulary 5b. Lack of ideas
5c. Problems in sentence structures/ grammar 5d. Problems in using punctuations
5e. Problems in using connectors 5f. Problems in organizing ideas
5g. Others (Please specify: ………) 6. What activity which your teacher did in class when he/ she conduct
a writing lesson? (you can choose more than 1 option) 6a. Using models and letting students following the models
6b. Using pictures, slides… to attract students to the topic and letting them write
6c. Activating students’ knowledge of the topic then letting them write 6d. Letting students write in groups then the teachers corrects
6e. Going around the class to help students with vocabulary and structures
6f. Teacher helps SS with step-by-step instruction
Thank you very much for your cooperation!
Appendix B
QUESTIONNAIRE TO STUDENTS
Dear Students,
The main purpose of this questionnaire is to understand your attitudes towards the course you have experienced, specifically, the application of giving feedback through grading, self-assessment and peer assessment in assessing your writing skill (three indicators of formative assessment).
Your cooperation is very important for the study. I will highly appreciate it if you kindly answer the questions as carefully and honestly as possible.
The information you provide will be strictly confidential and used only for the research purpose.
Yours sincerely,
Tran Nguyen Bao Huong (TESOL 2012, USSH, Ho Chi Minh City)
Part 1: Personal information
Name: ______________________________________________________
Age: _______________________ Grade: __________________________
Gender: Male Female
How long have you been studying at VUS?
_______________________________
Part 2: Survey Items
Direction: Please put a tick (ü) in the right box to show how much you agree or disagree with each of the statements using a rating scale of 1 to 5.
(1) Strongly Disagree (2) Disagree
(3) Neutral (4) Agree
(5) Strongly Agree
No. Items
Rating Scales (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (7) Feedback through grading
7a I prefer my writing to be given feedback from my teacher rather than marked without any comments.
7b I have opportunities to respond to comments to clarify what I have not understood quite well.
7c
I know what were expected to learn and identifies what I learned well, and what needs to be learned better via teacher’s feedback
7d I can see my learning progress via feedbacks from the teacher
(8) Self-assessment
8a Self-assessment is very important in evaluating written works
8b I can base on the checklists in order to assess my own progress.
8c I need teacher’s support with the self-assessment
8d I need more time to practice self-assessment strategies because I have not familiarized with this before.
8e I appreciate the opportunities to revise my own writing after the self-assessment
8f I feel more responsible for my own writing pieces than before.
(9) Peer assessment
9a Peer assessment is helpful in evaluating written works 9b I like the way my teacher let us to work with my friends
to learn from each other.
9c I can learn a lot from my peers’ feedback
9d My friends give me accurate feedbacks based on the checklist.
9e I can edit my writing piece more efficiently thanks to feedback from my teachers and my friends.
(10) General students’ attitudes towards this writing course
10a This course has better met my individual learning needs 10b This course helps me improve my writing skill a lot 10c I hope these assessment activities to be maintained in the
following courses
Thank you very much for your cooperation!
Appendix C
INTERVIEW QUESTIONS TO STUDENTS
1. What do you think about the writing course you have just taken?
How has it affected your English writing? Why?
2. How helpful is the class for you? Are there any difficulties you have to encounter during the learning process? (receiving feedback through grading, self-assessment, peer assessment)
Appendix D TEACHING DIARY
Class: Date:
Aim(s):
Assessment of Student Learning:
Strengths Weaknesses
Teaching reflection:
Things has been done well
Things need to be improved Drawbacks Next step for
improvement
Appendix E
TRANSCRIPTION OF STUDENTS’ RESPONSES IN INTERVIEWS
GOOD GROUP- 7 students
1. What do you think about the writing lessons you have just taken?
How has it affected your English writing? Why?
Student 1 (S.G.1): I think the course was interesting and I could experience new way of assessment in writing sessions. I liked my writing to be assessed based on the criteria which the teacher and students had discusses in the class.
Students 2 (S.G.2): This was the first time I experienced this kind of assessment in the class. I felt more responsible for my studying than ever before and I had more opportunities to revise my writing to make it better. I really appreciate the way of involving us the assessment activity in writing lessons.
Student 3 (S.G.3): I liked this course very much and the way my teacher instructed us during writing time, especially giving comments and marks for each piece of writing. Thanks to it, my writing is much better than the previous ones.
Student 4 (S.G.4): This writing course helped me improve my writing skill a lot since I had many chances of revising my writing a lot of times before submitting papers to my teacher. In the previous course, I had not care much about the revision and editing steps much, consequently, my results were not often high.
Student 5 (S.G.5): After this course, I found out that learning English writing skill was interesting than I thought. I had many opportunities to interact with my teacher and my friends to make my writing to make it better.
Student 6 (S.G.6): This course offered me a lot of good chances of learning English writing skill. I appreciated them very much as I made me more interested in learning this skill. I found out that my writing had improved much.
Student 7 (S.G.7): This course had increased my interest in learning English writing skill. I preferred the way teacher let us involve in the assessment process, which I had never done before. Thanks to it, the quality of my writing is better than ones I had written in the previous course.
2. How helpful is the class for you? Are there any difficulties you have to encounter during the learning process? (receiving feedback through grading, self-assessment, peer assessment)
S.G.1: I appreciated self-assessment because I had a good chance to look at my own piece of paper again and I could make it better than the first draft.
Moreover, I loved receiving comments of teacher for my writing so that I knew which were my strong and weak points in writing skill. Thanks to it, I could easily improve this skill based on the useful feedback.
S.G.2: Although this was the first time I could experience this kind of assessment, I liked it so much. It helped me involved in assessment activity, which was supposed to be teachers’ responsibility. As I told before, self- assessment and peer assessment made me more responsible to my writing than ever before because I had to follow the success criteria set before if I wanted my writing to be appreciated by teacher as well as my friends.
S.G.3: I totally agreed with my friends’ opinions above. However, I found out that my friends’ comments sometimes were not exact and we still need the help of teacher or other friends. To tell the truth, I did not trust my peer’ feedbacks as much as my teacher’s.
S.G.4: This course had changed my mind towards the assessment activity in the class. I found teacher’s comments very useful for me because it indicated my weak points in each piece of writing so that I could focus on these points to improve my writing skill gradually.
S.G.5: Peer assessment was quite an interesting activity and useful because I had opportunities to learn a lot from my peers, such as their ways of using words, phrases, grammar… However, sometimes I received incorrect feedback from my peers, and then we had to discuss with each other to decide who was right.
S.G.6: I thought setting success criteria was very important and useful because that I knew what my teacher expected from my writing or how I could have a good writing. Thus self-assessment and peer assessment gave me opportunities to take a look at my writing and revise them based on the success criteria.
S.G.7: What I liked most in this course was to receive detailed comments from my teacher for my writing in stead of marks only. I could see my progress via these feedbacks. Moreover, I was very keen on self-assessment in the class as this was very helpful for the student to look back his/ her papers and then revise carefully before submitting the final one for teacher.
AVERAGE GROUP- 8 students
1. What do you think about the writing lessons you have just taken?
How has it affected your English writing? Why?
Student 1 (S.A.1): Actually, I thought that my writing skill could improve a little bit after this course. The teacher had given carefully instruction of how to carry out a writing process.
Student 2 (S.A.2): I could see my progress in writing skill after taking this course. I liked this course very much since I could meet my expectations.
Student 3 (S.A.3): To tell the truth, I could not recognize the difference in my writing skill after this course compared with the previous courses although the way of teaching had changed a lot. I still have some difficulties in writing English skill.
Student 4 (S.A.4): Although the course was quite interesting, I still had not recognized why to learn English writing skill while I did not use it much in daily communication. So my results were not high. I thought that if I tried more, I would get higher results than these one.
Student 5 (S.A.5): Based on the scores and comments I got, I found that my writing skill, to some extent, had improved after this course. Most of my writing pieces satisfied the criteria set in prior by teacher and students. I was happy about my improvement.
Student 6 (S.A.6): I really interested in the writing course I had just taken. I felt more confident about my writing skill than ever before. My teacher and my friends had helped me a lot in this course.
Student 7 (S.A.7): This course was exciting because it made me really involved in the writing process, which I had never been before. I knew how to make my writing better based on the success criteria for each kind of writing topic.
Student 8 (S.A.8): This kind of assessment was quite new for me, so sometimes I found it rather confusing. However, I thought that once I got familiar with it, I would get many benefits from it. I hope that this kind of assessment would be maintained in the following courses.
2. How helpful is the class for you? Are there any difficulties you have to encounter during the learning process? (receiving feedback through grading, self-assessment, peer assessment)
S.A.1: Receiving detailed comments from my teacher for a piece of writing was quite useful because I could get a lot of benefits from this activity. In the previous course, I just received only marks, and I could not figure out much from these numbers. Teacher helped me to find out my weakness as well as my strengths in order for me to improve my writing paper.
S.A.2: Due to the fact that this kind of assessment was applied the first time in writing lesson, I was still quite strange to it and had some difficulties, especially peer assessment. In fact, I did not always trust my peers’ comments for the writing due to his or her lack of language ability. Sometimes they did not want to hurt me, so they just point out the good points, not the weak ones.
S.A.3: Teacher helped me to understand the success criteria for each kind of writing topic and then I could apply into my writing. Success criteria, for me, was necessary because via these rubrics, I knew what I had to do in order to get high marks and good comments from my teacher. Moreover, I can easily assess my peer’s papers via these criteria.
S.A.4: At first, I was quite strange to this kind of assessment. However, after two weeks, I got familiar with it and I thought that it helped me much in improving my own piece of papers based on the success criteria. I think if this kind of assessment were applied in the following course, my writing skill would be much better.
S.A.5: I had the same opinions with all of ideas above. Actually, my writing skill had improved a lot thanks to self-assessment based on the success criteria.
I had identified my goals to aim for, which was why I love this writing course.
S.A.6: The rubric of assessing writing papers was really helpful because it led me the aims for each writing lesson which I was supposed to reach. My teacher let me follow these success criteria to self-assess my own papers and my peers’, too. However, I thought that peer assessment, sometimes, not as useful as self- assessment since my friends gave me incorrect comments.
S.A.7: I still have some difficulties in language proficiency, especially grammar, so I find it hard to write a piece of writing without any grammatical mistakes. However my friends could not give me all correct feedbacks, sometimes they made me confused and did not know how to do next.
S.A.8: It was a new experience for me because I was used to having my papers corrected by teachers. I have not had to do this kind of assessment so far. I still met some difficulties in interpreting success criteria, so I was not sure whether I could give exact comment for myself as well as my peers. Hence I really needed my teacher’s support.