Qualitative Evidence of Academic Growth
Introduction
Qualitative growth, as demonstrated through student writing samples, is a cornerstone of my English classroom in Indonesia. I currently teach at an English language immersion school with classes designed to provide students with authentic and engaging experiences with which to practice their writing, speaking, listening, and reading skills in a natural setting to move them closer to fluency. At the beginning of each unit, I provide students with a prompt, which asks them to share their opinions about a real-world problem or social issue that relates to our upcoming unit theme. This writing task serves the dual purpose of allowing students to express their thoughts and opinions as well as allowing me to gauge students' vocabulary and English language proficiency in regards to the topic, which will be covered by our upcoming unit. At the end of the unit, after direct instruction, students are given the same prompt with the additional caveat that they should try to use the target language, vocabulary, and grammar structures from the unit in their writing. These two writing samples can then be compared to examine students' growth in content knowledge as well as an indicator of qualitative growth in regards to expressing their opinions through written English. The ability to clearly and concisely communicate an idea, display content knowledge and state an argument is a crucially important skill for success in college and any career path my students take after they leave my classroom. I strive to give students the opportunity to make dramatic levels of measurable and rigorous academic gains in regards to qualitative growth, displayed through writing, to act as the ultimate door opener to prepare for the level of rigor necessary for success in college and a career in the 21st century.
Student Writing Samples: Beginning-of-Unit
At the beginning of our unit with the theme of wildlife conservation, students were given the prompt: "do you think that dealing with problems in society, such as poverty and disease, are more important than preserving wildlife? Give reasons in your essay." Students were told to write in complete sentences and paragraphs—no further instructions were given. This prompt is displayed in the documents below. The requirements for this writing task were intentionally left vague to allow students a choice in how they wished to respond. This task was designed to serve the dual purpose of checking students' potential prior knowledge about content relating to our upcoming unit topic as well as determining students' level of written English language proficiency for expressing their thoughts and opinions about the topic. The prompt also states that students should write between 120 and 150 words. However, students were told to use this as a general guideline not a strict requirement for this beginning-of-unit task. Students were given this same prompt at the end of the unit with additional instructions, which will be explained in greater detail in the next section below. This particular assignment was selected for analysis because through a comparison of the beginning-of-unit and end-of-unit writing task I can track qualitative growth in students’ ability to use academic language, target vocabulary and grammar structures in their writing.
In the documents below you will find three student samples of this writing task as well as the associated rubrics. While these samples were graded and returned to students with feedback, they did not count for an actual grade. Students looked at the feedback I provided, and then I recollected the samples until the end of the unit. Following the end-of-unit writing task, students were given back both writing samples to compare and identify areas of strength and areas to focus on for the following unit.
The three students represented in the samples below were selected because of their differing levels of academic language proficiency for English overall. Student one is one of the strongest students in this particular class in regards to her writing. Student two’s level of academic language proficiency for written English is significantly lower than her peers in this class. While she has strong spoken English skills, she typically struggles with her writing. Student three represents the average student in this course—for writing tasks she tends to score close to the average score.
Student one's beginning-of-unit writing sample
Student one—shown in the document on the left—is generally one of the strongest in her class in regards to academic language proficiency for written English. However, for this beginning-of-unit writing task, she only partially answered the prompt before going off task. She responded to the question in a few sentences and then began discussing potential solutions for the problems in society and disease. While there is some logical flow to her writing, it is clear that she did not think about an outline before she started. Instead, she was writing whatever came to her mind as she went. She also uses a relatively informal register and does not use a high level of academic language.
Student two's beginning-of-unit writing sample
Student two—shown in the document on the left—has a relatively low level of academic language proficiency in regards to her written English. While she tends to be able to articulate her thoughts, she struggles to express her views and opinions in written form. In her beginning-of-unit sample shown in the document on the left, student two does not effectively organize her thoughts, and there is no logical flow to her points. She mostly strings together independent thoughts, using simple language, and does not have cohesion. She makes many spelling and grammar errors, but her meaning is still clear with some effort. It is evident through the writing sample on the left that student two did not have the academic language necessary to express her thoughts and opinions about this topic adequately.
Student three's beginning-of-unit writing sample
Student three—whose work is shown in the document on the left—typically scores close to the average for this class for writing tasks. While this student addresses the prompt, her logic and organization make her thoughts and arguments challenging to follow. She starts by discussing the prompt but about halfway through she switches to talking about poverty. It is possible to see the link she is trying to make between the two strings of logic, but it is not immediately clear from her organization. This student also uses a relatively low level of academic language and her response if relatively informal.
Student Writing Samples: End-of-Unit
At the end of our unit with the theme of animal conservation, students were given the same prompt. However, this time the writing task counted for an actual grade. Before students started working on the task, we went over the rubric as a class. Students were told to use target vocabulary terms from the unit; plan out their thoughts before writing to ensure their essay had a beginning, a middle and an end with a logical flow from one idea to the next; proofread their writing; use a formal register; and use the conditional form, which was the target grammar structure for the unit. Students were allowed to reference their book and vocabulary lists in their notes to identify academic language that could be useful for their writing.
By having students complete the same prompt as the beginning of the unit, I was able to easily compare growth in student level of English language proficiency as well as their ability to fully express their thoughts and opinions about the target topic. The end-of-unit writing tasks from the same three students displayed above are included in the documents below.
Student one's end-of-unit writing sample
Beginning-of-Unit: 8.5/15
End-of-Unit: 14/15
Student one displayed a dramatic increase—approximately 37%—in her ability to express her thoughts and opinions on the topic of wildlife conservation using academic language. In this end-of-unit writing task, she has a logical flow to her thoughts, and her stance on the real-world issue is clear. She also fully incorporates our target language from the unit as well as the conditional tense, which was the target grammar structure. She also concludes with a call to action, which is great to see. She has a few minor errors in spelling and grammar—which could have been corrected with proofreading—that stopped her from receiving a perfect score.
Student two's end-of-unit writing sample
Beginning-of-Unit: 5/15
End-of-Unit: 10/15
Student two was able to double her score from her beginning-of-unit writing task until her end-of-unit writing task. While her final score is still relatively low, she was able to experience a dramatic level of qualitative growth between these two writing tasks. In her beginning-of-unit task, student two did not have a logical flow to her thoughts and arguments. She mostly strung together independent clauses at random. However, by her end-of-unit writing task, she was able to begin to develop key points and accompanying arguments. She started to create a more cohesive essay by including various linking words between her thoughts and clauses.
Furthermore, she attempted to incorporate our target grammar structure for the unit and included target vocabulary. As I told this student in her written feedback, while she still has room for improvement she should be proud of the growth she was able to achieve throughout this unit. With continued hard work and dedication to her writing, this student has the potential to keep making dramatic academic gains.
Student three's end-of-unit writing sample
Beginning-of-Unit: 8/15
End-of-Unit: 12/15
The overall goal for this class is for every student to pass with an overall grade of 80% or higher. This student exactly met this goal for her end-of-unit writing task. She was able to incorporate our target language and vocabulary for the unit thoroughly. She included one of the highest levels of vocabulary and academic language out of all submissions for her class—resulting in an increase of approximately 27% for the unit. Her score would have been higher, but she did not include the conditional tense, our target grammar structure for this unit. When I asked her about this omission, she said she was listening when we reviewed the rubric before starting the task but forgot to use the tense when writing. I conducted an informal assessment with her to check her knowledge in this regard.
Furthermore, this student displayed one similar issue in her end-of-unit writing task that she did in her beginning-of-unit task. While her essay had an overall structure and flow of logic, there were several points where she appeared to switch thoughts halfway through a sentence. This student would benefit from additional scaffolding and support in regards to pre-writing planning, which I will provide for the next writing task.
Conclusion
Through an analysis of the beginning-of-unit and end-of-unit writing samples from the three selected students above, it is clear that all learners were able to achieve dramatic growth as displayed through this qualitative measure. While each of these students still has room for improvement, they have each started to achieve the measurable and rigorous academic gains that will act as the ultimate door opener for the level of rigor necessary for college and career readiness in the 21st century. My classes are designed to provide students will opportunities to practice and use their speaking, listening, reading and writing skills in authentic ways to push them closer to English language fluency. The above writing samples show the dramatic growth students were able to achieve on this journey throughout the selected unit. I use the data from qualitative measures such as the writing samples above in conjunction with quantitative data to inform my instruction, provide scaffolding and support where necessary, and to design a learning environment where all learners can achieve and exceed our target learning outcomes.