TAI2020 #4 Tools/Measures/Approachers for Data Collection

Describe the tools/measures/approaches you plan to use to get a more detailed and accurate profile of students’ learning in relation to that challenge. Justify why you chose these approaches and tools.

To have a detailed and accurate profile of my students’ learning in relation to my challenge, their writing proficiency, I need to use tools/measures/approaches which can provide both quantitative and qualitative information about my students. I therefore need both formative and summative assessment instruments for that purpose.

The New Zealand Ministry of Education (2008) refers to what can make an effective teacher of English leanuage learners. An effective teacher means taking time to find out the educational background of each learner one works with and taking time to oserve what sort of learner they are. Such knowledge of learners would help develop ways to focus on the student's learning strengths and weaknesses.

On the same vein, the ministry refers to some factors which can affect the English language learners' acquisition of an additional language. These include their - first language oral and literacy, age, previous education, teaching and learning approaches, similarities and differences between L1 and L2, language learning experience, exposure to English, interaction with English native speakers, cognitive ability, and physical disability. Categorising these factors, there can be five main types of English language learnes.

Interview

Interview is a qualitative research technique which involves individual interviews with respondents to explore their perspectives  on a particular idea or situation. Interviews can also aim to simply seek personal information from certain individuals for a particular purpose. There could be ‘structured’ interviews where pre-determined questions are prepared and interviewees answer in the same order. With ‘unstructured’ interviews, no questions are prepared prior to the interview and data collection is conducted in an informal manner. The ‘semi-structured’ interviews have components of both structured and unstructured interviews. This interview type has a set of same questions to be answered by all interviewees, at the same time, additional questions might be asked during interviews to clarify and/or further expand certain issues. 

Now understanding that ELLs are not a homogeneous group - they come from different countries, cultures, home environment, educational backgrounds, and even different literacy practices in different situations - I feel that using interview as an approach to gather information about my learners would be a very appropriate approach to use. I will use a ‘semi-structured’ interview approach which will have prepared questions and some other questions arising during interviews. This information will be very helpful in building the profile of my students. 

Based on the five different types of English language learners the ministry of education identified, I created this table for my learners to identify the best categories that describe them as learners. I used this as part of my interview.

Inquiry Group - Types of Learners
Instruction: Read the descriptions under the last column to the right, and highlight the boxes which best describe you, your education, and language learning before you arrived in New Zealand.
#	Names	1	2	3	4	5	Descriptions
1	M. D. H						1. Begin school at the age of five or six, with minimal or no previous exposure to English.   2. Begin school after the normal commencement age and have had severely disrupted schooling. 3. Arrived from overseas with school experience equivalent to that of their New Zealand peers, except that they have learned in a language other than English. 4. Had most or all of their education in New Zealand but still had difficulties with the English-language demands of mainstream classes.  5. Have learning difficulties or delays for reasons other than language and cultural differences.
2	E.L.
3	K.S.
4	L.K.
5	A.R.
6	P.V.
7	S.K.
8	A.K.
9	T.A.

In addition to these descriptions, I asked specific questions on their:

• L1 oral and literacy; similarities and differences between L1 and L2
• language learning experience and interaction with English native speakers
• cognitive ability and physical ability

English Language Learning Progression (ELLP)

ELLP provides a nationally consistent set of progressions for teachers to use to identify stages and patterns of progress in the language development of English language learners from years 1–13. These progressions describe typical patterns of progress for English language learners as they acquire English as an additional language. Teachers need to know these about English language learners in order to maximise their learning of English. They are helpful in choosing content, vocabulary, and tasks that are appropriate to each learner’s age, stage, and language-learning needs.

For a start I need to use this tool because it is a national key guideline for assessment, planning, and teaching of English language learners (ELLs) in New Zealand. We use this as a standardised assessment at school. ELLP will provide me with both summative and formative information on my learners across the four English language skills - listening, reading, speaking, writing. In this inquiry I would be interested only in my learners’ stages or achievement levels with their specific descriptors of progress in writing language skill. The analysis of oral and written texts at each stage of the progressions will be able to provide useful information on text selection for teaching and learning.

Students’ first writing drafts 

When students do any NCEA writing assessment, I give them a topic (based on content or literature genre) studied in class, a purpose or type of text to write, audience to write for, and the assessment criteria (the intended marking schedule). Students are then asked to do a plan and then write their first drafts. They submit these first essay drafts to me and based on my feedback they continue to work on their essays, proofread, edit, and submit as final copies. Those final copies are then marked and moderated for their final achievement and grades.

It is those first drafts that I am interested to analyse as a form of formative assessment. They will give formative information on the students’ writing ability. They will show what the students have achieved or known about writing a particular text type, what have not been achieved, and what the students require to best facilitate further progress. These information indicate the learning needs of the students which will help guide the focus of my teaching. These information will be especially relevant to how they develop, structure, and organize their ideas as well as their use of appropriate language features to suit the purpose, type, and audience they are writing for. They will help to describe the writing profile or learning-writing needs of my learners.

Online Questionnaire

Lin (2015) establishes that ELL students have different writing needs compared to native speakers of English, so needs assessment is fundamental to the design of a good curriculum. When being able to establish the writing needs of students for whom English is a second language, composition teachers can design teaching activities that address ELL students' writing needs and enhance ELL students' writing process and writing performances.

In her study - A study of ELL students' writing difficulties: a call for culturally, linguistically, and psychologically responsive teaching - I get interested in one instrument she used to gather information about writing needs of her participants. The instrument was an online writing difficulties survey which aimed at measuring the participants' self-perception of their writing difficulties. It consisted of 3 different scales:

• (a) cognitive/linguistic dimension of writing difficulties (25 items)
• (b) sociocultural dimension of writing difficulties (5 items)
• (c) psychological/ emotional dimension of writing difficulties (12 items)

The 42 items survey used a six-point Likert-scale, from "strongly disagree" to "strongly agree." Items were structured so that the highest score (6) indicated the greatest difficulty with an aspect of writing and the lowest score (1) indicated the least difficulty.

I really see the relevance and applicability of this approach on getting know more about the learners in my inquiry group, so I decide to use it in my information gathering. I would, however, add on 3 more items of my own interests - 1 cognitive/linguistic and 2 on psuchological/and emotional dimention. I would not like to focus on the first 5 demographic items of the survey as I also know those information about my learners, item 6 would be a focus.

View the Writing Difficulties Survey 

In closing, these four tools and measures are what I have selected to use to gather both quantitative and qualitative information to help describe the profile of my learners. I believe that knowing my learners well and what they need to learn and improve in their writing would be the most useful information to help in designing and delivering programmes to meet their own needs.