A description of assessment practices in the teaching of English: grade 6 teachers in four Cape Town schools

Ndungu, Makengo

A description of assessment practices in the teaching of English: grade 6 teachers in four Cape Town schools

Master Thesis

2014

Publisher

University of Cape Town

Department

School of Education

Faculty

Faculty of Humanities

Abstract

The dissertation examined teachers' formal assessment practices in the teaching of English in Grade Six, in order to describe and document them, and to establish the match between assessment and the requirements of official policy documents. Three case studies involving six Grade Six teachers and four schools were investigated. The schools included a wellresourced and poorly-resourced school which both taught English as Home Language, and two poorly-resourced schools that taught English as First Additional Language. The question that guided the study was;; What are the intentions of and the methods used by Grade Six teachers in assessing English in the case study schools? Assessment scripts were the primary data collected, supplemented by teachers' interviews and schools assessment policy documents. The results showed that lack of adequate guidance and support and lack of assessment skills compromised the standard of the teachers' assessment. All the schools assessed comprehension and grammar by means of short answer response and objective items. Most of these items adhered to their construction principles. The assessment of comprehension, however, focused mainly on lower order cognitive competency and items failed to distinguish between the different reading purposes. In assessing grammar, emphasis was placed on analysed knowledge. Assessment of vocabulary was not done in both First Additional Language and the well-resourced schools, and was inadequately done in the poorly-resourced home language school. Extended writing and oral were found to be the most difficult aspects to assess. Extended writing was done in three of the four schools and oral work in only two schools. Teachers struggled to set adequate activities and to provide suitable rubrics and developmental feedback. Numerous, generic and unclear assessment standards and many ambiguous requirements impacted negatively on the implementation of assessment. No school conducted assessment that adhered well to official requirements, demonstrating both the difficulty of putting the curriculum into practice and the shortcomings of the teachers and schools.

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