This section reports on four teachers’ (Tracy, Vee, Gwen, and Lucy) teaching writing procedures and their reported practices of formative assessment
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in their writing classes, including the strategies that they used and the reasons for using them. The findings reported in this section will help to answer the second research question ―How do EFL teachers practice formative assessment strategies in writing lessons?‖.
4.1.3.1 Teaching writing as part of an integrated lesson
Before analyzing the four EFL teachers’ reported formative assessment practices, I would give an overview of their teaching procedures in the writing lessons, which was described by them in the interview sessions. The teachers reported that they had to teach two skills, listening and writing, in one lesson in order to maintain the progress of the English curriculum for the lower-secondary schools. According to the prescribed syllabus, the Skills 2 lesson in the English textbook (English 6-9) consists of two sub-skills: listening skills as the input for the writing skills. It is therefore not surprising as the interview data showed that all four teachers Tracy, Vee, Gwen, and Lucy conducted the same lesson procedure. They were required to follow the guidelines in the official document issued by MOET. Also, the teachers also reported that they regularly had opportunities to observe and learn from each other, which might explain why their lesson procedure was identical.
Teachers’ reported lesson procedures were illustrated in the table below.
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Table 4.1 Teachers’ teaching listening and writing procedures Students’ activities
Students work in pairs and discuss or play games to activate students’
knowledge about the topic of the lesson
Students guess the topic of the pictures
Students ask and answer questions from the task in the textbook Pre-listening:
Students work in pairs and guess the correct answers for the listening exercises in the textbook
While and post-listening:
Students listen to the audio and check the guessing answers Pre-writing:
Students guess the topic of the pictures activity or play games to learn new vocabulary
Students work in groups and discuss ideas for the writing topic While-writing:
Students write a paragraph in groups or individually
Teacher observes and gives feedback Post-writing:
For group writing: Presentation or Gallery Walk
For individual writing: Students share their works with the class
Peers’ feedback session
Teacher’s feedback session
45 4.1.3.2 Assessing writing
4.1.3.2.1 Formative assessment strategies used by the teachers
Interview data show that all four EFL teachers reported employing questioning, feedback, and peer-assessment as formative assessment strategies (Bennet, 2010) (Section 2.2 for common formative assessment strategies).
Questioning
The participants employed questioning strategy through various teaching activities in their writing lessons. From the interview data, one of the common activities, where questioning was employed, was Guessing pictures. Three teachers Tracy, Lucy, and Gwen reported utilizing this activity in the pre-writing stage of the lesson. Below is an example of Lucy’s description of the activity:
Extract 11
...I will show some pictures in relation to the writing topic and ask students some questions. It can be ―What do you see in the pictures?‖ or ―Guess the action, the phenomenon in the pictures‖. (Lucy, preliminary interview, 05/03/2020)
In explaining the reasons for using questioning strategy in this activity, Lucy, Tracy, and Gwen stated that their aim was to activate the students’ prior knowledge about the topic before moving to the actual writing practice. For example, Gwen declared:
Extract 12
Usually, at the pre-writing stage, I would ask the students to look at the pictures and answer my questions (....). I think through the activity I will know what my students have already known about the topic, then I can help them to develop the ideas to write the paragraph based on their prior knowledge.
(Gwen, pre-teaching interview 1, 05/03/2020)
Besides the Guessing pictures activity, the teachers also stated that they organized other activities to employ Questioning strategy to assess the students. Vee, for
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instance, carried out the Q & A (Question and Answer) session after listening to her students’ presentations. In her perspective, by employing questioning through the activity, she would be able to elicit the evidence of her students’ learning and to know what they acquired in the lesson. The following extract highlights Vee’s reported use of formative assessment:
Extract 13
....I will assign two to three groups to present their writing projects for the class. After they finish, I will ask some students to give questions for the presentation groups. I think it is also a way for me to assess my students. If they stay focused and listen to their friends then they can give questions to them. I will also know what they acquired during the presentation. (Vee, pre-teaching interview 1, 28/02/2020)
In short, the EFL teachers reported they regularly used questioning strategy in different teaching activities to practice formative assessment in their writing classes.
Feedback
Interview data also show that giving feedback was also a common strategy that was reported to be used by all the participants in the study for formative assessment purposes. As shared by Lucy and Tracy, in their writing classes, they would often assign their students to write on the board or A0 paper, then make presentations about their works. The two teachers professed that they gave feedback to the students after listening to their presentations. By doing this, teachers were not only able to point out students’ mistakes for adjustment, but also capable of identifying their strengths which needed to be reinforced.
Extract 14
....When each group finishes their presentation I will give them my feedback.
Interviewer: Do you base on any criteria to give feedback to your students?
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Lucy: I think I do not base on any fixed criteria or any standard to give feedback. I just give comments about students’ noticeable problems, which can be seen at that time. I also give feedback about what students did well, what they achieved to remain and continue to show it next time. (Lucy, pre- teaching interview 1, 05/03/2020)
One noticeable finding from Extract 15 is that Lucy admitted she did not use any criteria in her feedback giving. However, in order to identify students’ strengths and weaknesses, she probably had some implicit criteria in her head. This finding of teacher giving feedback without having explicit criteria was also discussed in previous literature (eg., Bates, Lane & Lange, 1993)
Besides employing feedback strategy during and after students presented their ideas, other teachers, Vee and Gwen, gave their comments by writing them in students’ essays. The two teachers stated that in their writing classes, students would be assigned to write paragraphs and submit them at the end of the lessons, teachers then marked their works and wrote down their comments.
Extract 15
When I mark an essay, I will first underline students’ grammar mistakes or inappropriate words. About the ideas development or other aspects, I would write my comments about it later at the end of the essay then give it back to the student the next day. (Vee, pre-teaching interview 1, 28/02/2020)
As shared by Vee, she wrote down her comments in the students’ essays with a view to pointing out the students’ mistakes and giving suggestions for adjustment.
Vee hoped that from her feedback, students would know what they needed to do for improvements.
In general, feedback was reported as another common strategy that teachers used in their writing classes for formative purposes.
Peer-assessment
The last formative assessment strategy that was mentioned to use by four of the teachers was peer-assessment. Like the two above mentioned strategies, the
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four teachers also reported that they employed peer-assessment through various teaching activities in class. A common activity carried out by most of them was pairwork or groupwork. According to Lucy and Tracy, they assigned students to work in pairs or groups to discuss questions or compare works with their partners on a regular basis. Explaining for the use of groupwork to peer-assess, both teachers stated that they wanted to provide students a chance to interact with their peers, to discuss and share each other’s work. The two teachers believed that by so doing, students would be able to learn from each other and reflect on their own mistakes to improve their own writing.
Besides organizing pairwork and groupwork for peer assessment purposes, teachers (Vee, Gwen, and Lucy) also professed to employ this strategy in other activities such as presentation and gallery walk. The teachers stated that after listening to students’ presentations, they would ask some students to give comments to the presenters. In the gallery walk activity, students would also be asked to give feedback when going around the class to see others’ works. They believed when peer-assessing, the students who were assessed could realize their problems, which might not be seen by themselves and they could learn from this feedback. Gwen added that not only these students could take advantage of their friends’ feedback but they could reflect on their own works and learn from their peers’ mistakes. For example, Gwen said:
Extract 16
...When other students in the class watch their friends giving feedback to the presenters, they could also learn from that. They will be able to see the presenters’ mistakes and reflect back to themselves to see if they have those mistakes or not. And they might improve from that too. (Gwen, pre- teaching interview 1, 05/03/2020)
In summary, this section has shown that questioning, feedback and peer- assessment were reported as the three popular strategies used by four EFL teachers (Tracy, Vee, Gwen, Lucy) for formative assessment purposes in their
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writing classes. Gwen, Vee and Tracy, who perceived the conception of formative assessment as teaching activities (Section 4.1.2.1), did employ formative assessment strategies in their classes as they stated. Moreover, Lucy who regarded formative assessment as using instruments such as oral tests and paper tests also reported that she used the three strategies in her writing lessons on a regular basis.
Although the teachers believed that formative assessment was used for grading purposes, they still looked for students’ learning evidence and planned to adjust their teaching after employing the strategies. It might be that the teachers did not thoroughly understand the conception of formative assessment and they might not realise their reported practices were also forms of formative assessment. Also, they might not be aware of the contradiction in their perceptions of formative assessment purposes (Section 4.1.2.4). As evidenced in Section 4.1.2.3, besides using formative assessment for grading purposes, they also believed this assessment was beneficial in identifying students’ learning which they actually reported doing in their classes.