Academic literature on the topic 'Upper secondary school-leaving examination in English'

Although the results of the final examination in Indonesia were the dominant factor in determining high school graduation, the public still did not know how the examination was administered nor how results were used to determine student graduation. Despite its importance, no comprehensive studies about its implementation have been conducted. The present study investigates the implementation of school-based assessment (SBA) in upper secondary schools focusing on the development and administration of the English writing test. This particular test was not covered in the English national examination. Twenty-one schools were surveyed, selected through stratified random sampling. In-depth case studies were conducted in three selected schools representing fully implementing school (FIS), moderately implementing school (MIS), and partially implementing school (PIS). The majority were categorized as PIS. This study suggests that the way in which examinations were implemented needs serious consideration, especially in light of the new regulation that student graduations are based on the result of the school examinations and no longer on the result of the national examination.

This study explores the factors leading Thai upper-secondary school students to study English at tutoring school. The students’ perceptions of their EFL private tutors and mainstream school teachers are also a focus of this research. Drawing on statistical data from 80 upper-secondary school students, it shows that these students perceive EFL private tutors to be more effective in the provision of examination support, particularly regarding the university admission examination, compared with mainstream school teachers. Overall, these students have more positive attitudes towards their English tutors than their mainstream school teachers. They agree that tutors have higher English language proficiency and can make them understand the lesson better than their school teachers. The characteristic of the tutors and teaching techniques is considered a significant factor leading students to study English at tutoring schools, particularly the teaching techniques that allow them to do better on university examinations. These findings not only highlight the impact of private tutoring schools on language education systems, but also caution Thai educational policy makers and practitioners to further explore the pressure of the university admission examination on upper-secondary school students in the country.Keywords: Examination support, English language proficiency, private tutoring schools, teaching technique, Thailand.Cite as: Chan, C. & Mongkolhutthi, P. (2017). The factors affecting students’ choice in studying English at private tutoring schools: A case of Thai upper-secondary school students. Journal of Nusantara Studies, 2(2), 44-52.

The complex and varied sociolinguistic reality of World Englishes and English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) has important implications for English Language Teaching (ELT). Besides questioning the validity of the ‘native speaker model’, the complexity of Global Englishes raises several issues, both at a theoretical and at an applied level, particularly for teaching. A plurilithic rather than a monolithic (monolingual/monocultural) perspective is called for, one that can make learners aware of the different roles, contexts, linguistic and functional varieties of English, so that they can be prepared to effectively interact with speakers of different Englishes and in English as a Lingua Franca contexts. Communication strategies have been shown to have a particularly significant role in English as a Lingua Franca communication, that is characterized by negotiation and co-construction of meaning; in these encounters, where different linguacultures meet, ELF speakers employ a range of pragmatic strategies to solve, or pre-empt, (potential) non-understandings often drawing on their plurilingual repertoires, too. Communication strategies can thus be said to play a fundamental role in effective communication, particularly in contexts where English is used as an international Lingua Franca. In this light, it would seem important for ELT materials to include activities aimed at raising awareness and promoting practice of communication strategies, so that they can become an integral part of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) and English as a Second Language (ESL) classroom practices towards the development of communicative ‘capability’. This article will illustrate a study investigating whether ELT materials addressed at Italian upper secondary school students include activities and tasks related to communication strategies. The examination of textbooks published by Italian and international publishers from the 1990s to 2015 shows that, apart from a few interesting cases, consistent attention has not been given to this important area. Implications for further research on the inclusion of communication strategies in ELT will also be set forward.

本稿では、明治期から大正期、特に1880年代から1910年代にかけて、高等学校の入学試業で英語・ドイツ語・フランス語がどのように扱われたのかを第一高等学校の入試を中心に明らかにし、その位置づけが中学校の外国語教育に与えた影響を考察する。重要な転機として、（1）1895年の第一部（法文学志望者）の一部においてドイツ語受験が可能とされ、また第三部（医学志望者）はドイツ語のみ受験が可能とされたこと、（2）1899年に第三部の受験がドイツ語に加えて英語でも可能となったこと、（3）1919年の規定により、文科乙類・理科乙類ではドイツ語による受験が、文科丙類ではフランス語による受験が可能となったことが挙げられる。ドイツ語やフランス語が入試科目に加えられたことは、高等教育におけるこれらの言語の重要性を維持する一助となった。しかし、どの専門であれ英語での受験が可能となった状況では、東京府立第一中学校の例が示すように、中学校でのドイツ語・フランス語教育推進にはつながらなかった。 Extensive research has been conducted on English entrance exams in Meiji- and Taisho-era Japan (e.g., Erikawa, 2011; Imura, 2003; Matsumura, 1997; Sasaki, 2008). However, very few studies have explored how other foreign languages were treated in entrance exams during this period of secondary and tertiary educational development. This paper, therefore, offers an examination of how English, German, and French were treated in higher school entrance examinations during this period, especially from the 1880s to 1910s, with a focus on Daiichi Koto Gakko (the First Higher School; named Daiichi Koto Chu Gakko, the First Higher Middle School, between 1886 and 1894), a predecessor of several university programs in the current system. How the treatment of these languages in entrance exams influenced foreign language education at middle schools, many of which turned into senior high schools after World War II, is also discussed. During the Meiji and Taisho eras, foreign language education in Japan received criticism from education experts for its English-only focus (Shimo, 2018; cf. current criticism in, e.g., Morizumi, Koishi, Sugitani, & Hasegawa, 2016; Otani, 2007). Foreign languages other than English that were important at that time were German and French. An advisory committee to the Prime Minister, Rinji Kyoiku Kaigi (Extraordinary Education Committee: September 21, 1917, to May 23, 1919) proposed in its report on May 2, 1918, that German and French, in addition to English, be promoted as foreign language subjects to be taught at middle schools. Discussion in the advisory committee was reflected in Higher School Order, which was promulgated in December 1918. According to the National Higher School Higher Course Entrance Examination Regulations promulgated in the following year, English, German, and French were included in the foreign language subjects for entrance exams. A unified-test system—with all higher schools using the same test questions—was also introduced. Until 1919, most higher schools offered only English, with an exception of Daiichi Koto Gakko. Daiichi Koto Gakko had three departments: The First Department was for candidates for law and literature majors; the Second Department for candidates for science, engineering, and agriculture majors; and the Third Department for candidates for medicine majors. Back in 1886, the school announced that they were going to offer only English from the 1891 entrance examinations, but their entrance examination rules also went through further changes. Among the changes, important turning points were as follows: (a) the change in 1895 allowed the First Department to offer German language as an entrance exam subject for certain groups of majors and the Third Department to offer German as the only foreign language option in their entrance exam; (b) in 1899, the Third Department started to offer English, in addition to German, as an entrance exam subject; and (c) in 1919 (two departments, Humanities and Sciences, were then formed instead of three), one section of Humanities and one of Sciences allowed German exams, and one section of Humanities allowed French ones. The last regulation was implemented nationwide, but not all higher schools offered French and German. By including German and French as entrance exam subjects, their importance in tertiary education was made stronger or at least kept the same. In spite of all these changes, however, the number of middle schools that taught German or French did not increase; it was limited to a few private middle schools. One notable case was Tokyo Furitsu Daiichi Chu Gakko [Tokyo Prefectural First Middle School]. German was added as a foreign language subject in their curriculum in 1902 when Tomoo Katsuura was the principal. In 1901, Katsuura attended the sixth meeting of Koto Kyoiku Kaigi (Upper-Level Education Committee; the first advisory committee of the Ministry of Education: 1896-1913), where the committee agreed on their proposal to the Ministry that German be taught in addition to English at one middle school in each prefecture. Katsuura’s effort turned out to be ineffective in promoting German education at the middle-school level because Daiichi Koto Gakko had already added English to the entrance exam for the Third Department in 1899. This historical examination indicates that when English was offered as an entrance exam subject for all majors at the tertiary level, simply providing other languages in entrance exams was ineffective in promoting those languages at the secondary level.

A plethora of researchers have attempted to examine the characteristics of a good and effective teacher in order to enhance the process of teaching foreign languages. In line with those explorations, this study aims at performing a comparison between Slovak pre-service EFL (English as a foreign language) teachers’ and Slovak in-service EFL teachers’ perceptions of a good and effective language teacher. To achieve this objective, a convenient sample of Slovak university EFL students who were pre-service teachers (n = 74) and Slovak lower-secondary and upper-secondary school teachers (n = 63) were employed in the study. Using a 57-item Likert-type questionnaire, independent-samples t-tests were conducted to investigate the potential differences between the perceptions of the pre-service teachers and in-service teachers. Moreover, the 10 highest-mean and 10 lowest-mean items of both groups were analyzed. The research results revealed that statistically significant differences (p ≤ 0.05) were detected in only 12 of the 57 items. Furthermore, a closer examination of the differences and the items with the highest and lowest means indicated that the pre-service teacher participants favored traditional teaching more than their in-service teacher counterparts, who preferred CLT (Communicative Language Teaching) to a greater extent. The potential implications of these findings indicate that the fundamental principles of CLT such as employing plenty of pair-work and group-work activities, facilitating learners’ autonomy and responsibility for their own learning, or varying classroom interaction strategies deserve more careful attention during pre-service teacher training.

Establishing how current academic performance relates to future performance is key to helping educators fine tuning their assessment practice. At present high failure rate of Agriculture subject at Primary Leaving Examination (PSLE) has been of a great concern in Botswana. To determine the relationship between the standard four attainment scores and Primary Leaving Examination scores key in tracing the origin of failure observed at primary school leaving examination. The main focus of this study was to determine the validity of standard four attainment scores in predicting performance at standard seven Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE). A quantitative study of correlational research design used secondary data scores obtained from Botswana Examination Council (BEC) to determine the correlation coefficient (r) between the two sets of scores. The study indicated that there was strong correlation, r=.8 at P= .00, between standard four attainment scores and PSLE scores, therefore the null hypothesis that states that there is no significant relationship between standard four attainment scores and PSLE scores was rejected. It was concluded that high failure rate obtaining at PSLE is related to poor foundation laid at lower levels. It is recommended that standard four attainment scores or performance should save as criterion for moving into upper primary (standard 5-7) and subsequently seating for PSLE.

AbstractWhat role does multimodality play in assessment in the English subject in Norway? This article focuses on final written examinations from 2014 to 2018 and investigates the multimodal literacy skills that examinations invite lower secondary school students to demonstrate. Examinations in the English subject are digital and technically open to a rich multimodal practice. Analysis in this article finds that the texts to be read in examinations are carefully designed multimodal texts, with plentiful use of visual aspects of writing and with images that add significantly to the creation of complex cohesive ensembles. When it comes to the examination tasks, however, the opportunity for the students’ multimodal output is limited and ambiguous. In sum, there is an imbalance between input and output.Keywords: multimodal literacy, multimodal texts, English, assessment, lower secondary schoolInspirert av bilder: En multimodal analyse av sentralt gitt skriftlig eksamen for 10. trinn i engelsk i Norge fra 2014 til 2018SammendragHvilken rolle spiller multimodalitet i engelskfagets vurderingspraksis i Norge? Denne artikkelen fokuserer på avsluttende skriftlig eksamen fra 2014 til 2018, og undersøker hvilken multimodal literacy (tekstkyndighet) eksamen legger opp til at ungdomsskoleelever får vise fram. Eksamen i faget er digital og teknisk sett åpner den for en rik multimodal praksis. Analysen i artikkelen viser at eksamenstekstene elevene leser er nøye designede multimodale tekster, med rikelig bruk av visuelle aspekter ved skrift, og med bilder som bidrar til komplekse, helhetlige, sammensatte tekster. Når det gjelder eksamensoppgavene derimot, er elevens mulighet til å uttrykke seg multimodalt både begrenset og tvetydig. Alt i alt er det en ubalanse mellom det som skal leses og det som skal skrives til eksamen. Nøkkelord: multimodal literacy, sammensatte tekster, engelsk, vurdering, ungdomstrinn

Our paper addresses the relationship between parental wealth and children’s post-secondary transitions. More specifically, we contrast the likelihood of children with an upper secondary degree to make a transition into further education or the labor market with their likelihood to stay inactive, i.e., to engage neither in further education nor in labor market activity (NEET) after leaving school for the first time. While previous research argues that there is a general positive association between parental wealth and children’s educational and occupational transitions, we argue that for children of wealthy parents, this association might be weaker or even negative. Our study focuses on Germany, where wealth has a weak correlation with the traditional measures of parental socio-economic background. For our empirical analyses, we apply data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP) and use binary logistic regression models for discrete-time event history analyses. Although not statistically significant, our results show that the relationship between parental wealth and children’s post-secondary transitions is not linear. Our study contributes to previous research by providing a detailed examination of the potential mechanisms underlying the relationship between parental wealth and children’s post-secondary transitions.

It cannot be denied that research on L2 pronunciation has developed greatly in the last decades, nevertheless the conclusions drawn from such studies are rarely applied in practice, especially in the school curricula. Studies carried out in Poland since early 2000s have proven that pronunciation teaching is still almost absent at schools (apart from the academic level) and that L2 learners are highly critical concerning both their own as well as their teachers’ pronunciation in EFL. Although it has been shown that correct pronunciation is crucial in L2 communication and that this element of L2 competence has been included in the oral part of the school-leaving (<em>Matura) </em>exam (CKE, 2013), the popular claim is that it is still difficult to find any elements of pronunciation training in textbooks designed for this kind of schools. The first aim of this paper is to compare the latest versions of compendia (<em>repetytoria </em>in Polish) usually applied in the last class of this type of school. The books are used to revise all the previously acquired knowledge about an L2 and are supposed to include theory and exercises in all skills and elements of a target language. And as learners graduating from upper-secondary school are about nineteen years old and, moreover, some of them may stop learning L2 intensively after graduation, it is the last chance to work seriously on English phonetics. The study results show that in most cases, although a separate pronunciation module is not included, word-lists in compendia are usually accompanied by audio tracks and, in some cases, even IPA is applied. Another aim of the study is to examine whether upper-secondary L2 teachers pay attention to their learners’ pronunciation and train it. An online questionnaire concerning pronunciation teaching practices was completed by 51 teachers from all over Poland and this did not bring optimistic results.