Abstract:

External assessments of language competence in English at the end of secondary education have been perceived sceptically by Slovak teachers of English since their introduction. The most criticised aspect was that of objectivity related to assessing speaking and writing skills achieved by secondary school students after more than 4-8 years of studying English at primary and secondary schools. The government is responsible for externally-produced writing tasks and students’ performances are assessed and marked by teachers appointed by local authorities. Despite the fact that analytical marking criteria have been elaborated, piloted and adjusted to suit the needs of assessors, the objectivity of assessment based on facts and not influenced by personal beliefs of assessors is still not satisfactory.

This situation in the country evoked the idea of intensive training of assessors with the aim to achieve the quality of judging students’ performances, marking their papers objectively, not being influenced by assessors’ personal opinions and individual ways of writing in English. This step required a well-structured workshop to offer assessors an intensive training programme covering a number of aspects they need to be aware of. The most important decision referred to inviting those assessors and teachers of English who had been keen on being trained and open to new philosophies that are behind the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages. The participants of the workshop were expected to contribute to discussions using good examples from their own experience. The materials referring to different CEFR scales and descriptors were introduced in the stage of familiarisation, which was followed by a set of tasks that were aimed at teachers’ becoming aware of and familiar with the descriptors used in the analytical marking criteria.

Marking criteria are based on a particular philosophy that was presented and then verified in assessing the selected papers of students. The judgments of teachers were collected, analysed and compared. The teachers were expected to justify their assessments aligning them to specific descriptors. The eight-hour workshop was followed by a three-hour seminar delivered to students who asked to be trained how to write in English properly. Similar procedures related to familiarisation activities and marking criteria were presented and piloted. The students commented on the procedures, which enabled presenters to come to certain conclusions and recommendations that will be presented in the paper based on an analysis of the achieved data.

Keywords:

Writing skills, objectivity, marking criteria, intensive training programmes.