One of the main goals in Slovene classes in primary school is to develop pupils' communicative competences, which include critical evaluation and formation of various types of texts that are appropriate, comprehensible, accurate and effective (Bešter Turk, 2011). Among other, pupils develop communicative competences with the help of critical evaluation and text formation.
In everyday life, the most common communicative competence is listening and the least common communicative competence is writing (Križaj Ortar, Magajna, Pečjak in Žerdin, 2000). Formation of written, monologue texts is particularly difficult for people who do not do it very often. Pupils that are only learning how to form texts also face problems. This master’s thesis investigates how written text formation is taught in the English learning environment. English pupils achieve excellent results in the field of writing and they especially enjoy writing, so we wanted to determine how they arrive at these results.
The theoretical part focuses on the following terms: communication, communicative competences, writing and text. Moreover, we investigated how texts are formed in English and Slovene primary schools with the help of corresponding literature.
In the empirical part of the thesis, we observed and examined how the pupils of fifth grade in an English primary school learn to form a text; for comparison, we conducted the same research in pupils of fifth grade of two Slovene primary schools–they formed a narrative text in the Slovene class (language class). In the end, with a document analysis, we studied and compared both curricula regarding text formation.
We determined that there are differences in the development of text formation between English and Slovene primary schools. English pupils are more motivated for writing than Slovene pupils. They are motivated by their teacher’s approach, the use of different work types and methods, various activities as well as accessories and materials found in the classroom. The pupils learn about a specific text formation process in pairs or in a group. A great emphasis is put on the writing preparation, which is vital for the pupils to entirely develop their creativity, acquire strategies of text formation and, at the same time, enjoy writing. The instructions for text formation are longer, but divided into more parts or paraphrased. The teacher keeps repeating them to make sure that every pupil understands what their task is. Also, the pupils learn with the help of self-evaluation and peer-evaluation; what is more, their teacher gives them feedback on their work as well. In Slovene primary schools, the greatest stress is put on the teacher’s feedback while self-evaluation and peer-evaluation are not as commonly used as they could be. In English primary schools, the use of differentiation and individualization is focused on activities and the process itself, while the goals remain the same for everybody. On the other hand, in Slovene primary schools, weak learners are quickly assigned minimal standards, but the path to achieving their goals is mainly the same for all.
With the research concluded we gained an insight into the English principles of teaching text formation and into the differences and similarities between English and Slovene principles of teaching. Our findings can serve as recommendations for improving text formation in Slovene primary schools and contribute to the creation of more quality texts in Slovene. Moreover, they can help the Slovene pupils improve their attitude towards writing.
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