LANGUAGE TESTING (LT)2 PROJECT (Testing students language skill of second year students SMKN 1 Kendari)

By:

Zakridatul Agusmaniar Rane

Wd. Ritna Yuniyr Ullah

Nisriani

Yulia Minah Arifta

this is a project that we done in our LT (Language Testing)2 class. please leave your comment after read this report. your comment will help us in order to accomplish this project
(ini adalah proyek yang kami kerjakan di kelas LT2. setelah membaca laporan ini, harap beri komentar anda untuk membantu kami melengkapi tugas ini. terima kasih :)

General description:

This is an LT (Language Testing) project to test students’ writing ability. In this project we do a series of activities, such as: with plan the project, make a test, come to the class and teach the students, test the students, asses the students’ test and make a report of our project.

In this projct, we test writing ability of vocational school students in this case second grade students of SMKN 1 Kendari. The test material is about descriptive text. So, after we give them brief explanation about desctiptive text, students are asked to write a descriptive text in 30 minutes and the text must be 200 words length.  

Writing aspect that we asses in this project are content, organization and language features aspect. The scoring guidelines is based on Jackob, et al model. The test then asses by using inter-rater system where we use two rater

After did all the activities in this project, we get the result that second year students of SMKN 1 Kendari still have low ability in writing descriptive text. The students score are in the range of poor and very poor.  

Purpose:

This project is aimed to see the level of students writing ability at clas 2b2 of SMKN 1 Kendari especially in descriptive genre

Subject of Study:

 This project will be conducted at SMK Negeri 1 Kendari and the subject of this study are second grade students particularly class 2b 2. The number of subject is 20 students.

  


Job Description

To make it easier, we made divisions of work to be done by each team member which can be seen in the list below:

1. Searching material about assessing writing:

-      Rida

-      yunir

2. Searching material about descriptive text:

-      Ani

-      Lia

3. Making a test:

-      All of the member

4. Asking for permission at SMKN 1 Kendari

-      Yunir

5. Test (printing, copying, distributing the test)

-      ani

6. Teaching

-      Rida

-      Yunir

7. Documentation

-      Lia

8. Rater

-      Rida

-      Yunir

9. Counting the data

-      Yunir

-      Lia

10. Making a single report

-      Rida

-      Ani 

What we do?

There are some activities that we did in this project:

1. Gathering the literatures

We start the project by gathering some usefull information and literature about how to assess writing test including the band score and marking scheme guideline. Besides that we also looking for some material about descriptive text including the general structure, language features and example of descriptive text because before giving test, firstly we give the students brief explanation about descriptive text to scaffold their knowledge.

2. Making a test

Because we asses writing skill, so in making a test, we didn’t make a number of question. The test we made is in form of instruction to write a descriptive text:

“write down the descriptive text about your school!” 

3. Testing students

In testing process, we spent about 90 minutes. We started with giving brief explanation about descriptive text including the general structure, language featuresand giving example, and explain the tecnical of the test about 60 minutes and 30 minutes for test session.

4. Assessing the test

The test then assess by using inter-rater reliability where we use two rater and the rater is we ourselves. We determine the inter rater reliability and students final score to see the level of students writing ability.

5. Making a single report

The last activities is make a single report about the resulf of the text. Besides make a single paper, we also give the test result to the school (SMKN 1 Kendari) and publish the report in the blog: http://www.rumahanthares.blogspot.com

 
Time alocation

•       60 minutes for explanation

•       30 minutes for test

Total:

60 minutes + 30 minutes = 90 minutes

Material:

DESCRIPTIVE TEXT

Definition: 

•       descriptive text is a text which lists the characteristics of something.

•       description is used in all forms of writing to create a vivid impression of a person, place, object or event e.g. to:

     > Describe a special place and explain why it is special.

     > Describe the most important person in your live.

     > Describe the animal’s habit in your report.

Generic structure:

•       General statement

•       Explanation

•       Closing

Language features:

 Using Simple Present Tense                 

 Using passive voice                              

 Using adverbial phrase                         

 Using general and abstract noun

 Using conjunction of time and cause-effect.

 Using action verbs

 Using noun phrase

 Using technical terms

Assesment Instrument:

Band Score:

The band score we use is based on Jackob, et al. Actually, there are five aspect of writing suggested by Jackob but in this project we only take three of them, including content, organization and language use. The indicators for each component can be seen in the table below:

CONTENT
30 - 27 =  Excellent to very good. Knowledgeable subtantive through development of thesis relevant to assignt topic.
26 - 22 =  Good to average. Some knowledge of subject range limited development of thesis mostly to topic, but back detail.
21 - 17 =  Fair to poor. Limited development of subject little substance inadequate topic.
16 - 13 =  Very poor. Does not show knowledgeable of subject non-substantive, not pertinent, not enough to evaluate.

ORGANIZATION

20 - 18 = Excellent to very good. Fluent expression, ideas clearly stated/supported, succinct, well organized, logical sequencing, cohesive.
17 - 14 =  Good to average. Some what choppy, loosely organized, but main ideas stand out, limited support, logical but incomplete sequencing.
13 - 10 =  Fair to poor. Non-fluent, ideas confused or disconnected, lack logical sequencing and development
9 - 7 =  Very poor. Does not communicate, no organization, not enough to evaluate.

LANGUAGE USE

25 - 22 = Excellent to very good. Effective complex construction, f error of arrangement, tense, number, word order/function, article, pronoun, preposition.
21 - 18 =  Good to average. Effective but simple construction, minor problem in complex construction, several errors agreement, tense, number, word order/function, pronoun, preposition, but meaning seldom obscured.
17 - 11 =  Fair to poor. Major problem in simple/complex construction, frequent error of negation, agreement, tense, number, word order/function, article, pronoun, preposition, and fragment, deletions, meaning confused or obscured.
10 - 5 = 

Very poor. Virtually no mastery of sentence construction rules, dominated error, doe not communicate, or not enough to evaluate

Marking scheeme:

•   to determine the final score, we use formula as follows:

                              S  = X/ n x 100

Where     :          

             S            : Students’ score

               X          : Students’ raw score

               n          : Maximum score

Total Score Composition Category

Score interval	Composition categories
100-88 87-75 74-64 63-49 48-34	Excellent to very good Good to average Fair Poor Very poor

Inter-rater Agreement

•           Pearson Product Moment Correlation (Hatch and Lazaraton, 1991)                           

 

Where:

rxy          :  The coefficient correlation of the rater.

Xi             : The students’ score from the first rater.

Yi             : The students’ score from the second rater.

N             : Number of respondent.

Coefficient correlation inter rater agreement:

rxy > r table = ignficant correlation

rxy < r table = unsignificant correlation

Finding:

No	Categories	Score Interval	Frequently	percentages
1	Excllent to very good	100 – 83	0	0%
2	Good to average	82 – 69	1	5%
3	Fair to poor	68 – 52	6	30%
4	Very poor	52 – 34	13	65%
	Total		20	100%

After assess the students writing, we find that there were no students or 0% who got excellent to very good categorized, 1 student or 5% who got good to average categorized, 6 students or 30% who got fair to poor categorized, and 13 students or 65% who got very poor categorized.

From that result, we can conclude that the level of students’ writing ability at class 2b2 of SMKN 1 Kendari are still low because 65% of students only got very poor categorized. 

Bibliography:

Imran. 2010. Improving Students Writing Ability under Genre Based Approach of Class X-1 at

MAN 1 Kendari. Unhalu: Unpublished Thesis

Weighle, Sara C. 2002. Assessing Writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University press

Zahwori, Ahmad. 2009. Descriptive Text. Retrieved on Oktober 15 2011 from

http://ahmadzahrowi.wordpress.com/2009/03/16/descriptive-text/