Abstract

The standards of writing in English language among the Malawian secondary school students remain unsatisfactory judging from the Malawi National Examinations Board (MANEB) Chief-Examiners’ reports on English language, despite the implementation of continuous assessment. Therefore, the purpose of this exploratory study is to explore the knowledge and practices of continuous assessment by secondary school teachers of English language while assessing writing skills. The participants in the study were 8 teachers of English language from 4 different conventional secondary schools in Blantyre urban, Malawi. Adopting a case study approach and mixed research methodology, and using the 6 + 1 Trait Writing Model by R. Culham, data was generated through multiple instruments that included semi-structured interviews, questionnaire, classroom observation and document analysis. The qualitative data was analysed through Thematic Analysis (TA). In additional, the quantitative data was analysed through frequencies tabulation and percentages computation. The findings of the study show that the knowledge of the principles of continuous assessment by the participants was insufficient. The findings further reveal that most of the teachers inappropriately put these principles into practice to help students enhance their writing skills. The implication is that teachers should re examine their focus on the practice of continuous assessment to assess all the traits of writing. They should also provide scoring rubrics when designing writing tasks. Furthermore, they should frequently report the feedback of continuous assessment of writing and hold correction sessions with students, and they should plan writing lessons based on the students’ writing needs diagnosed in the continuous assessment. Finally, the heads of departments of English language need to provide well prepared handbooks of continuous assessment to improve teachers’ knowledge on how students’ writing abilities would be assessed.

More details

School	: School of Education
Issued Date	: 2023

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