Young learner's self-assessment in Croatia

Asenka Kramer

OBJECTIVES

To see:

1. Whether young learners have an insight into their knowledge and how successfully they can assess what they can do in the target language;
2. Whether filling in a self-assessment questionnaire can influence young learners' motivation and if it can, in which aspects;
3. Whether young learners can be motivated to do more of what they can already do or more of what they cannot do;
4. Whether there is a difference between the groups A (8 to10 years of age) and B (11 to 14 years of age), regarding the above mentioned;
5. Whether the teachers and curricula designers can utilise the results of the questionnaires;

¨   regarding the questionnaire improvement,

¨   concerning teaching techniques and the curricula, including the incorporation of

a. learning to self-assess and
b. materials that make students more competent in 'can do' categories of competence.

QUESTIONNAIRES AND PROCEDURES

Questionnaire A and Questionnaire B were produced by a team of teachers teaching young learners. The main idea of the 'can do' statements underlying the Common European Framework of Reference and the Portfolio was fully accepted and implemented in designing the questionnaires. Questionnaire A was designed on the basis of the content of the curricula for 5 years of learning English, starting by the latest at the age of 6. Questionnaire B was designed on the basis of the content of the curricula for 8 years of learning English, starting the latest at the age of 6.

Questionnaires for group "A" contain the most relevant 'can do' objectives, covering fully the competence of learners after the fifth year of learning English in our courses. It means that the 8 and 9-year-olds will modify their answers in the course of further learning by the age of 10. 'Can do' statements in both A and B questionnaires cover four broad categories of competence:
a) understanding spoken English; b) understanding written English; c) speaking and d) writing. Questionnaires for group "B" contain the most relevant 'can do' objectives, covering fully the competence of learners after the eighth year of learning English in our courses. It means that the 11 to 13-year-olds will, in the course of further learning by the age of 14, achieve what they could not do at the moment of filling in the questionnaire.

Questionnaire AC and Questionnaire BC were designed taking into account both possible intellectual and emotional aspects of young learners' self-assessment. They were designed to test whether and how A and B self-assessment questionnaires influenced young learners' motivation for language learning and the development of their independence.

Children and young teenagers were given the questionnaires, A or B, depending on their age and asked to fill them in. A year later (January 2002), they were asked to fill in the questionnaires again, this time in the class. Immediately after that, they were asked to fill in questionnaires AC or BC, and leave both A and AC or B and BC to their teacher for further analysis. Incorrectly completed questionnaires, where some items were skipped or double-filled, were withdrawn from the analysis.

SAMPLE
Target groups were children in group "A" (8 to 10 years of age) and group "B" (11 to 14 years of age), all of them having started to learn English in a foreign language school latest at the age of 6. They had been taught by different teachers and come from different social backgrounds.

Questionnaires were collected, altogether 137 in group "A" and 74 in group "B".

Premises of the school are in the city of Zagreb, Croatia. Questionnaires were collected, processed and held at the headquarters, Badaliceva 2, Zagreb, Croatia.

GROUP "A" RESULTS
137 questionnaires were collected and 121 analysed, as 16 of them were incorrectly filled in and consequently not taken into consideration.

Students aged 8 to 10 have been learning English for 2 to 5 years and are generally better at speaking than at writing. Questionnaires were prepared as 'can do' statements on the basis of the 'can do' objectives after 5 years of learning, for those who have started latest at the age of 6.

The analysis of children's insight into their speaking competence, shows that most of them feel they can say what they like and what they do not like, introduce and describe their family, friends and themselves, describe the weather, talk about holidays and their wishes, thank and apologise and say if they do not understand something. Very few feel they can describe the countryside, talk about Croatia, Britain or America and continents and oceans, the reason for which presumably is their insufficient knowledge of the world in general, due to their young age. It is interesting that they feel they are better at speaking, than understanding spoken language. It certainly is due to the fact that, although being the most usual practice situation in the class, 'understanding your teacher and friends in the group', was not given as an option in questionnaire A.

When it comes to writing, children feel they are best at what they learnt first, like writing an invitation to their birthday party, followed by writing a postcard. Writing a letter to a friend seems less familiar, not being thoroughly covered in the curriculum and less than half of the learners feel they can write an e-mail, which is not covered in the curriculum at all, thus accounting for only those who have a PC at home. Writing had lower scores than speaking, but it is interesting that learners generally feel they are better at writing than at reading. This is caused by the fact that 'understanding texts in the course book' was not mentioned in the questionnaire and by the fact that more careful teaching procedures are applied to teaching writing and that they always have something to write for homework. This might explain their pretty strong attitude against more homework, obvious in the Questionnaire AC.
The questionnaire should be better adapted to children's actual learning situation and include both understanding the teacher and friends in the group and understanding texts in the course books.
Curriculum will have to be amended with more examples and practice of e-mail and letter writing and students should be encouraged to find pen friends to whom they can regularly write. Self-assessment might become a regular procedure done several times during the course.

The results show that children aged 8 to 10 have a fairly good insight into their own knowledge. More often than not, they know what they can do. This 'can do' has to be understood in accordance with their age and knowledge of the world. When a child feels she or he can talk about family and friends, she or he is talking about family and friends as children do. Long stretches of speech, without the support and encouragement of a partner, are not common even in their mother tongue.

Questionnaire AC shows in which aspects self-assessment questionnaires can be motivating for this age group of learners. The majority (93%) of them felt motivated to do more of what they already felt they could do best, i.e. to speak. Many were motivated to learn more (92%) and to read more (85%) and they felt proud of how much they could do in English (84%). A wish to write more accounted for 74% of children. Fewer of them felt motivated to start learning another language (58%), which in itself is not the primary objective of learning English. Fewest felt motivated to do more homework (49%). A serious amount of effort will have to be put into creating more interesting and motivating tasks for homework, including short interesting reading tasks. Moreover, tasks will have to be to the point, less time-consuming and better adapted to their knowledge.

GROUP "B" RESULTS
74 questionnaires were collected and 71 processed as 3 of them were incorrectly filled in and consequently not taken into consideration.

Students aged 11 to 14 have been learning English for 5 to 8 years and are generally better at speaking than at writing. Questionnaires were prepared as 'can do' statements on the basis of the 'can do' objectives after 8 years of learning for those who have started by the latest at the age of 6.

The majority of teenagers feel they can do whatever is stated in the speaking competence category in the questionnaire. Most of them feel they can talk about themselves, their family, friends and experiences, school, city, country and countryside. They feel they can buy goods and services, telephone and give their opinion about interesting topics, followed by talking about a book or a film and giving a presentation on interesting topics, these being abundantly practised in the class. The lowest score was found with 'interview and being interviewed' (79%) which is somewhat surprising as it is a common role-play situation in the class.

Quite low scores (85%) were also found with firstly, 'participate in interesting discussions' and secondly, 'talk about local and world events and issues'. The first may result from insufficient practice in class due to lack of time. Curricula will have to be analysed and modified so that less important exercises will have to be replaced thus creating more time for discussions. This could refer to the second result too, although it might be attributed to the teenagers' age, when they sometimes like to pretend not to be much interested in these issues. They might become more involved if more attention were paid to introducing discussions on local and world events and issues.

When it comes to writing young teenagers feel they are not at their best there. Most of them are familiar with short reports and a 'matter-of-fact' style of writing, while creative writing like essays, accounts for only 72% of 'yes' answers. Fewest of them feel they can write a CV (63%), because CV is in the curriculum not before they are 13, the oldest among them being introduced to it previously. Serious modification of teaching writing methodologies will have to be applied in order to improve both the young teenagers' writing skills and their attitude to writing.

In Questionnaire B there are 'can do' statements where none of the teenagers opted for not being interested. This fact calls for further investigation into both learners motivation and interests in language learning, and curricula user-friendliness, considering that there are significant differences in attitudes towards what learners are 'not interested' in, between groups "A" and "B".

Questionnaire BC shows in which aspects self-assessment questionnaires can be motivating for this age group of learners. The majority of them felt motivated to speak more, where they also felt they could perform at their best, which is consistent with the results of the younger group of learners. They also felt highly motivated to learn more. Motivation for reading or being proud of how much they could do, accounts each for 77%, which is less than with the younger age group. The latter is probably a consequence of teenagers being older and more critical towards themselves and more sensitive to the gaps in their knowledge. Slightly more than a half wanted to write more (51%), which is considerably less than with the younger age group. This may indicate the need to pay more attention to creative writing, since fewest of them feel motivated to do more homework (20%), the percentage being much lower than with group "A". Not many felt motivated to illustrate it (28%) which is consistent with their 'more serious' attitude to life.

CONCLUSION
Children's and young teenagers' ability to assess what they can do in the foreign language they have been learning for more than two years should not be ignored. Results of our survey showed that they have a fairly true picture of what they can do, assuming their age and knowledge of the world are taken into consideration. A more detailed survey, which would compare results obtained by testing with the results obtained by self-assessment questionnaires, would give a more precise insight into their ability for self-assessment. Differences in attitudes between the age groups A and B require further investigation into curricula tailoring and teaching methods and procedures utilised with young learners.
The idea and the procedure of filling in self-assessment questionnaires motivated both groups for more of which they were best at, like speaking and learning English. They were least motivated for what they did not feel they did best. This implies that curricula have to be tailored to fit their needs better. Modifications should mostly affect the amount of reading authentic materials and creative writing.
More realistic results could be obtained by adapting the questionnaires to their real learning situation and by incorporating self-assessment sessions in regular teaching procedure during the course.