Honduran students need to improve spelling, says study

Tegucigalpa, 22 Mar Honduran students maintain the theme and internal agreement in the texts they write, but they need to adapt to the purpose and gender they are asked to write about, as well as improve spelling, according to a study by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Fund ( UNESCO). In addition, third and sixth graders wrote texts in which they maintained the topic and agreement, but they need to improve vocabulary use, respond to the purpose and gender they are asked to write about and improve initial spelling, emphasizes the Writing test of the Regional Comparative and Explanatory Study (ERCE 2019) of the agency of the United Nations. ERCE 2019 was announced by the Regional Office for Education for Latin America and the Caribbean (OREALC/UNESCO Santiago), along with the representatives of the 16 countries that took part in the study. “Writing is a highly demanding competence at the cognitive level and, unlike oral language, it does not develop naturally in most people,” explained the director of OREALC/UNESCO Santiago, Claudia Uribe. That is why “we must teach it from the earliest levels of the educational process and continue to practice and teach it intentionally throughout the school journey. Nowadays, writing is one of the most demanded skills in the workplace, being critical for good performance in multiple trades and professions,” he added. Uribe further noted that “writing helps to think, to order and to transmit ideas, to interact with others indirectly and asynchronously, to communicate and capture in a lasting way thoughts, reflections and learning, and that “the development of high levels of competence in writing is an imperative for all education systems.” MAIN RESULTS OF THE STUDY According to the study, third and sixth graders were proposed communicative situations that addressed different genres. In the third grade, they were asked for a narrative letter about a trip and a text for the presentation of a dance, while in the sixth grade a letter of request and a descriptive text of a non-existent animal. “For the correction, three aspects or indicators were evaluated: the discursive domain (communicative purpose and appropriateness to the slogan, gender and, in the case of sixth grade, in addition, registration); the textual domain (vocabulary; global coherence, sentence agreement and textual cohesion) and legibility conventions (spelling and punctuation)”, he says research. In addition, in the third grade, only 4 out of 10 Honduran students who wrote a letter and 2 out of 10 among those who developed a descriptive text, achieved the highest performance in responding to the purpose and slogan they were asked to write about. With regard to gender adequacy, only 3 out of 10 students who wrote a letter reached that category, and 1 in 10 among those who wrote a descriptive text. The study also highlights that in terms of textual development, the majority of students achieved the highest performance in maintaining the central theme in their texts (about 60% in the letter and 50% in the descriptive text). Almost half of the students wrote maintaining agreement within the sentences, without making mistakes; however, only 2 out of 10 were able to write cohesive texts, that is, texts in which there were no missing references and no words or links needed for comprehension were omitted. This same proportion of students (20%) managed to write with adequate vocabulary, without repetitions or inaccuracies in the use of words, the study points out, among other aspects. ERCE 2019 is the most recent large-scale learning assessment in the region, which was promoted just before the massive suspension of face-to-face classes due to the covid-19 pandemic. The measurement, in which Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Dominican Republic and Uruguay also participated, sought to evaluate the writing performance of third and sixth grade students in the region, through the implementation of their skills in the production of texts based on a communicative situation, adds the study. CHIEF gr/rrt