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The use of functional approach to assessing secondary four express students' narrative writing
Abstract
This study explores the use of the Functional Approach in assessing the writing of Upper Secondary School students in Singapore. It is felt that the current system of assessing Upper Secondary students' writing is flawed primarily because it does not focus on the specific structural and linguistic requirements demanded by the various genres of writing, such as the narrative and argumentative genres. This study therefore sets out to test the effectiveness of an alternative approach to assessing students' writing using the Functional Approach (Macken and Slade, 1993) which focuses on particular genres of writing. The specific genre that this study focuses on is the narrative.
Assessing narrative writing through Functional Approach involves analysing students' work based on the purpose of the narrative, which is basically to entertain. This purpose is expressed through the structure (genre) and language features (register) of the narrative. Based on this concept, this study uses a set of criteria adapted from Macken and Slade (1993) and Derewianka (1994, 1996) for evaluating students' narrative texts. Eight students from a Secondary Four Express Stream in a neighbourhood school were selected for the study. The students were asked to write four pieces of compositions in total. After writing each piece, the students were to refer to the criteria given to them and the researcher's annotations to make the necessary changes to their drafts and to improve on them.
Through a close analysis of the structural and linguistic features of the four texts written by the students and the subsequent interviews conducted with the individual students, this study shows that assessing students' writing using the Functional Approach seems to have helped the students not only to be more aware of the distinctive text structure of narratives, but also to develop its various stages more substantially. They could also use the register appropriate to narratives.
This study should be of value for all English Language teachers in Singapore, especially as they embark on the new genre-based English Syllabus set by the Ministry of Education, which essentially grew out of the Functional Approach.
Assessing narrative writing through Functional Approach involves analysing students' work based on the purpose of the narrative, which is basically to entertain. This purpose is expressed through the structure (genre) and language features (register) of the narrative. Based on this concept, this study uses a set of criteria adapted from Macken and Slade (1993) and Derewianka (1994, 1996) for evaluating students' narrative texts. Eight students from a Secondary Four Express Stream in a neighbourhood school were selected for the study. The students were asked to write four pieces of compositions in total. After writing each piece, the students were to refer to the criteria given to them and the researcher's annotations to make the necessary changes to their drafts and to improve on them.
Through a close analysis of the structural and linguistic features of the four texts written by the students and the subsequent interviews conducted with the individual students, this study shows that assessing students' writing using the Functional Approach seems to have helped the students not only to be more aware of the distinctive text structure of narratives, but also to develop its various stages more substantially. They could also use the register appropriate to narratives.
This study should be of value for all English Language teachers in Singapore, especially as they embark on the new genre-based English Syllabus set by the Ministry of Education, which essentially grew out of the Functional Approach.
Date Issued
2000
Call Number
PE1471 Png
Date Submitted
2000