The knowledge and opinions of education students on teaching and assessing written language skills in the EFL elementary classroom

by Esther Fischer (University of Education Heidelberg, Germany)

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In today's globalized world, the significance of literacy, especially in the English written language, is undeniable. In Baden-Württemberg, English foreign language teaching currently begins in grade three. The curriculum only includes writing skills in the form of copying single words or sentences. However, it has been proven for many years that elementary school students are also capable of using the English written language in free writing (see e.g. 
Rymarczyk, 2010). These results indicate that the actual writing abilities of students are underestimated in the current curriculum and writing attempts should not be limited to mere copying. As the English and German grapheme-phoneme correspondences differ, spelling errors will inevitably occur. However, these errors are based on students’ logical and subjective rule hypotheses. Therefore, it would be valuable for teachers to productively work with such misspellings. This, however, requires orthographic knowledge and diagnostic skills (Rymarczyk, 2021).  The purpose of the mixed-methods pilot study presented here was to assess education students' (n = 25) knowledge and opinions about teaching and assessing written language in the EFL classroom.  For data collection, a two-part written survey was used. Part one was a test in which a sample text written by a foreign language learner was corrected. The second part was a questionnaire. Half of the questions related to the type of input the students had received on the acquisition, teaching, and assessment of written English during their studies. The remaining questions captured their opinions on the use of written language in the elementary school English classroom. The results showed that the majority of education students had not received specific input on how to evaluate and effectively work with the English written language. It was also shown that the participants did not feel competent enough to evaluate texts of foreign language learners and to give constructive feedback. 
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References:

Rymarczyk, J. (2010). Früher Schriftspracherwerb in der ersten Fremdsprache Englisch bei Kindern mit Migrationshintergrund. ForumSprache. (4), 60-78.

Rymarczyk, J. (2021). Teachers’ diagnostic skills in feedback on German primary school students’ first attempts to spell in English. In S. Frisch & J. Rymarczyk (Hrsg.), Current Research into Young Foreign Language Learners‘ Literacy Skills (25-51). Berlin: Peter Lang.