Assessment Instruments over Time

For the past ten years, Cambridge Assessment has been running a series of investigations into features of GCSE English candidates’ writing – the Aspects of Writing study (Massey et al., 1996; Massey et al., 2005). The studies have sampled a fragment of writing taken from the narrative writing of thirty boys and thirty girls at every grade at GCSE. Features investigated have included the correct and incorrect use of various forms of punctuation, sophistication of vocabulary, non-standard English, sentence types and the frequency of spelling errors. This article provides a more detailed analysis of the nature of the spelling errors identified in the sample of work obtained for the Aspects of Writing project from unit 3 (Literary Heritage and Imaginative Writing) of the 2004 OCR GCSE examination in English. Are there certain types of spelling error which occur more frequently than others? Do particular words occur over and over again? How many errors relate to well-known spelling rules, such as ‘i before e except after c’? Literacy has enjoyed a high profile since 1994 and has been promoted in schools through the introduction of the National Literacy Strategy (NLS). It was unlikely that the 2004 GCSE cohort (the ‘population’ from whom our writing sample came) was fully exposed to the NLS. This is because many primary schools introduced the NLS from the bottom up, or at least did not implement it for this cohort (in their final year of primary education in the first year of the NLS) on the basis that it would get in the way of preparation for key stage 2 (KS2) national tests (Beverton and English, 2000). This notwithstanding, Beverton and English noted that, in contrast to previous years, grammar was being taught every day and that all teaching staff in the schools observed had a greater awareness of literacy as a subject in its own right. Therefore, the performance of this cohort in spelling is likely to reflect some of the benefits of the NLS. The study used a stratified random sample of writing taken from a narrative writing task. The only suitable question was found on a paper which formed an alternative to coursework; a question which asked candidates to imagine, rather than to inform, explain, describe, comment, argue or persuade. This option was taken by only 8.3% of candidates – but these amounted to over 5500 candidates from a wide range of schools. The sample was stratified by grade so the fact that this paper was a minority option should be incidental, as the calibre of a candidate achieving a particular grade should be comparable regardless of the route taken through the syllabus. Whilst the possibility existed that schools choosing the examination option might reflect systematic variations in EXAMINATIONS RESEARCH All the right letters – just not necessarily in the right order. Spelling errors in a sample of GCSE English scripts Gill Elliott and Nat Johnson Research Division First published in Research Matters, Issue 7, January 2009 these to decode words (read) or to generate their own words (spell). Moats (1995) suggests that a phonetic spelling stage is then attained, with children following a ‘one letter spells one sound’ strategy. This is the point at which spelling can deviate from conventional ‘correct’ spellings, especially in English where sound rules do not necessarily match letter rules. At this point the successful speller must memorise specific rules such as grammatical endings, and different words which sound the same but are spelt differently. A study carried out between 1995 and 1998 by the Centre for Language in Primary Education (O’Sullivan and Thomas, 2000) collected data from London primary schools and investigated the teaching and learning of spelling throughout the primary years. Amongst other findings the study reported that it is helpful for teachers to study the mistakes made by individual spellers, in order to assess whether the mistakes they are making are phonetic or visual. In the UK there have been two main methods of teaching a child to read – synthetic phonics, where children are taught letter sounds before being introduced to whole words (Auger and Briggs, 1992), and analytic phonics, where whole words are introduced from the start. Johnston and Watson (2003, 2004, 2005) have suggested that the reading and spelling skills developed by children taught to read using synthetic phonics are very good. A number of frameworks already exist which incorporate categories of spelling error. QCA (1999) mentions errors due to unstressed vowels, long ‘e’, omission of single letters, confusion of consonants and homophones. Homophones are also a feature studied by Hepburn (1991) along with doubling and singling of consonants, articulation, and errors related to inflectional and derivational morphemes. Finally, Mudd (1994) discusses reasonable phonic alternatives – in other words plausible alternative spellings.