The focus of this dissertation is on pupils’ writing skills in Norwegian at the end of lower secondary school (the 10th school year). More precisely, this research covers writing quality differences between very good texts and good texts based on 10th grade exam assessments. Thus, the focus is on the differentiation between the marks 4 and 5 on the grading scale, and the goal has been to find the writing quality differences that exist between these two levels, based on an approximation of the entire text. Research on pupil texts and writing competence within a school context, connects this project to language in use. The language in use perspective allows the dissertation to be placed within the science of applied linguistics, whereas the practical aspect is connected to theory development.
Research material is collected from the Norwegian national KAL-corpus, which provides access to pupil texts within various quality categories, in addition to completed assessment forms from the censors. The study is both qualitative and text interpretive, as two different text types are interpreted: 1) completed assessment forms, and 2) pupil texts. The material is unique as the pupil texts have been assessed by three censors, in addition to the two ordinary censors, a fact that strengthens the validity of the research project.
The study indicates that text structure, credibility, engagement and orthography make up the quality differences between the two grading levels. Using abductive approaches, the criteria are operationalized in connection with the pupil texts, and established theory within language and text science has been brought in to explain patterns and structures in the texts, mainly based on rhetoric and systemic functional linguistics. Thus, new theoretical models have been construed to explain the type of writing quality differences found in this research. Finally, the four criteria are placed in a recently developed assessment form to visualize writing quality differences resulting from the analyses.
The project can contribute to two areas: 1) in a school context, where the assessment form is a significant pedagogical tool for developing pupils’ writing skills, and 2) within the research field of pupils’ learning outcomes, text competence and the problems connected to criteria.
This research project has been carried out at the Faculty of Educational Sciences, University of Oslo. The location throughout the research period has been the University of Stavanger.
Sammendrag på norsk: