Evaluation of descriptive texts in the 4th grade of primary school

Our master’s thesis deals with the evaluation of pupils’ texts in the first five grades of primary school. The theoretical part of the thesis deals with the communicative skill, the texts (with emphasis on descriptive texts) and the evaluation of (descriptive) texts in Slovenian lessons in primary school. The empirical part of the thesis consists of two parts. The analysis results of the teaching material used in Slovenian lessons in the fourth grade are presented in the first part. The second part of the thesis presents the results of the questionnaire on text evaluation (texts written at school) and the results of evaluating a description of an animal – Slovenian teachers teaching in the fourth grade of primary school participated in both activities. When analysing teaching materials used at schools we found that there are differences in their characteristics. Teaching materials differ in the quality of sample (descriptive) texts for pupils and in the quality of exercises. Only one in five teaching materials offers sample texts with all the key words used in the description of an animal. The transmission oriented model of work is predominant in most teaching materials. The exercises provided do not facilitate the systematic development of pupils’ communication skills. After analysing 121 questionnaires we found that 32,2 % of teachers think that approximately half of the pupils have problems when it comes to writing compositions. Teachers (43,0 %) think that pupils mostly have problems with choosing correct and relevant information connected with key words. The teachers see the lack of teaching time (47,9 %) and the lack of time for feedback (46,3 %) as the primary reasons for problems when it comes to writing animal descriptions. According to the teachers, pupils realize what problems they have, when delivering feedback about their compositions (36,4 % of respondents share this opinion). 33,1 % of teachers think that the pupils know the assessment criteria well. 60,3 % of teachers always inform the pupils of the assessment criteria before writing a composition. A concrete description of an animal got a 3 in 63,6% of teachers. 42% of teachers used the holistic method of evaluating, whereas the others used the analitical method. They used different evaluation criteria. The teachers believe evaluation to be demanding (in 76,9% of cases). They also believe that the biggest problems in evaluating a text arise from linguistic correctness and appropriate linguistic elements (57,0%). The results of our analysis confirmed that there are statistically important differences in primary school teachers with different length of employment concerning their opinion about the problems the pupils have when writing a description of an animal. There are also differences in when and how to inform the pupils of the evaluation criteria and finally there are differences in evaluating the description of an animal (how many points to give / what mark to give to an individual composition). The differences can also be found in primary teachers with different level of education. The differences are shown mainly in the level of informing the pupils of the evaluation criteria