UNESCO: Ecuador must strengthen text structure and spelling in 4th year of EGB

Quito, 22 Mar Ecuadorian students performed well on the Writing test of the Regional Comparative and Explanatory Study (ERCE 2019), run by UNESCO, but students in the fourth year of basic general education (GBS) need to strengthen gender structure and spelling. This was indicated by the results of the exam, published this Tuesday, where Ecuadorian students were characterized by writing texts that fit the slogan and that maintain the central theme, without repeating words and maintaining agreement within sentences. On the other hand, the performance of students in the fourth year of primary school was the most discreet, so the UNESCO Regional Office for Education for Latin America and the Caribbean recommended that the structure of textual genres and initial spelling be influenced. ERCE 2019 was given to primary school students from sixteen Latin American countries, including Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Dominican Republic and Uruguay. In all cases, the examination consisted of the implementation of their skills in the elaboration of texts based on a communicative situation. In Ecuador, fourth-year EGB students were asked for a narrative letter about a trip and a presentation text for a dance, and seventh-year students were asked for a letter of request and a descriptive text of a non-existent animal. DID NOT RESPOND TO THE REQUESTED GENDER Thus, most of the fourth year EGB students in Ecuador managed to write focusing on the requested topic (84% in the letter and 53% in the narrative text), but did not respond to the requested genre, since 58% did not do so in the format of a letter and 49% did not apply the correct structure in the narrative text. In the textual domain, 55% of the letters were written without repetitions or inaccuracies, and this percentage rises to 62% in the narrative text, while about 90% maintained the central theme of the text. In addition, 2 out of 3 students maintained agreement within the sentences, without making errors, although only 23% when writing a letter and 32% a narrative text managed to do so with cohesion. Regarding legibility conventions, 60% of students did not have punctuation errors, but 11% in the letters and 17% in the narrative text presented an association between phoneme (sound) and grapheme (letter) incorrect. BEST RESULTS IN SEVENTH GRADE In the case of seventh graders of EGB, 76.3% explained the intended purpose when writing a letter and 48% did the same with the narrative text, and a similar proportion of students managed to adapt to gender in both slogans In addition, 58% of students when writing a letter and 36% when writing a narrative text presented a record appropriate to the formal situation. As for textual mastery, just over half of Ecuadorian seventh-year elementary school students wrote texts without repetition or inaccuracy, and almost all managed to maintain the central theme in their writing. Likewise, 61% of the letters and 73% of the narrative texts of seventh cycle students maintained agreement within sentences, while 8 out of 10 students wrote in a cohesive manner, maintaining references and without omitting relevant words, such as verbs and subjects. As for readability conventions, one-third of seventh graders wrote texts that have an association between phoneme and grapheme in all their words, and 75% did not present punctuation errors. CHIEF fgg/sm/rrt