A study of primary 3 and primary 6 students' narrative writing skills and their development in territory-wide system assessment : from systemic functional linguistic perspective = 全港性系統評估小三和小六學生記敍寫作能力及發展 : 從系統功能語法角度分析

Abstract

TSA facilitates learning assessment with the purpose of collecting evidence to give feedback to teaching and learning. For a long time, writing assessment has been a relatively weak link for students' learning. Presently there does not seem to be any study on students' writing in TSA that can be used by schools for reference. This thesis makes use of Systemic Functional Linguistics to analyse 79 numbers of narrative writing samples of Primary Three (P3) and Primary Six (P6) in TSA with Basic Competence and Good Performance. 12 writing pieces were analysed in detail. 6 front line educational professionals of assessment were approached for interview. The study began with the three aspects of conceptual function, personal function and verbal function. It went through the seven aspects of diagrammatic structure, wording density, transitive system, connection, subject position, situational system and comment system, in order to find out the feature of language for Basic Competence and Good Performance of P3 and P6 students. In that, the writing ability development trajectory for P3 and P6 students could be mapped. This study found out that P3 writings are mainly reporting in nature, with only few variations of wording and emotional changes and few content expansions. P6 writings are mainly narrative, with variations of wording and emotional abundance and content expansions. Both P3 and P6 writings could narrate the subject properly in written language. However, the writing ability development of P3 and P6 students is not linear, but in four phases. The first phase is the basic competence of P3. The second is the basic competence of P6. The third is the good performance of P3 and the fourth is the good performance of P6. As the school grade progresses, the learning gap increases, but the basic competence of P6 is not better than the good performance of P3. Therefore the writing teaching in schools should focus on the language characteristics of different school grades to design the learning curriculum to give the top-notch students a boost and the slow learners a helping hand. Language teaching on aspects of diagrammatic structure and personal function should be stressed to improve the students' expression of emotion and the use of wording for different passage structures and styles. As for assessment, increase on assessment reference could be considered, and linguistic elements could be added in the assessment to make in-depth language analysis in order to give specific feedback to teaching and learning. (400 words)