Danish University Colleges
Handling ambiguity under pressure: Writing prompt and student responses at the Danish final exam in written composition
Troelsen, Solveig
Publication date:
2019
Link to publication
Citation for pulished version (APA):
Troelsen, S. (2019). Handling ambiguity under pressure: Writing prompt and student responses at the Danish final exam in written composition. Paper presented at ARLE, Lissabon, Portugal.
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#sdudk
June 2019
Handling
ambiguity
under pressure
Solveig Troelsen PhD Candidate
University of Southern Denmark Department for the Study of Culture
&
Associate Professor VIA University College
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– writing prompt and student responses at
the Danish final exam in written composition
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June 2019
Data
Full project (Rejected or recognized?)
Part one
The writing prompt from may 2017: an HTML file containing 4 assignments, and auxiliary documents
57 student papers from an average Danish school
Part two
6 think aloud protocols, video recorded and transcribed, from the rating process (professional examiner’s rating of 7 selected student papers)
2 focus groups discussing text quality and text norms, video recorded and transcribed
This presentation
The writing prompt
Student paper
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Background and relevance
1. First part of an explorative case study, Rejected or recognized?, investigating the final examination in writing in Danish lower secondary school in its context.
2. No research on writing assessment in Denmark 3. No expert knowledge among test constructors 4. Current unstable conditions for the examination:
New curriculum, Common goals for Danish as a subject (2015)
New test construct involving access to the internet (2017)
New test culture implying high-stakes testing. From 2015 and forward, students who do not pass the final exams, loose their legal rights for further education beyond lower secondary school.
New rating practice: Only one external examiner marks the students’ papers (2016). (Very low interrater reliability)
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June 2019
Theoretical and analytical framework
A socio cultural study, inspired by New Literacy Studies (Barton et al., 2000).
The concept of ‘writing events’.
Bakhtin’s communicational semiotics (Bakhtin, 1986)
Anthropological text semiotics (Berge, 2012) looking upon texts as utterances in their situational context and in the light of their cultural context as well.
Writing to learn, learning to write – ‘constellation analysis’ (Krogh & Jakobsen,
2019)
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Research question
What characterises the writing prompt at the examination in written composition in grade nine?
And how does the writing prompt position it’s implied reader as a writing self?
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June 2019
Constellations of writing
According to the project Writing to Learn, Learning to Write (Krogh & Jakobsen, 2019), the school writing takes place as a series of utterances in the sense of Bakhtin (Bakhtin, 1986), repeating in constellations of writing:
1. The writing prompt initiates the student writing 2. Student paper answers the prompt
3. Teacher responds to student paper
4. Student reflects on 1-3 (in talk-around-text-interviews with the researcher)
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The examination as a ‘constellation of writing’
Constellation analysis as developed by Writing to Learn, Learning to Write (Krogh & Jakobsen, 2019), adapted for the examination context (Troelsen, 2018)
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June 2019
The examination
The examination in Written Composition is one out of four exams in Danish as a subject.
The other three are: Oral Presentation, Reading and Spelling and Grammar
The average mark of these four tests must be 02 or above (equalling an E on the ECTS scale) in order to pass the exam.
The paper is marked by an external examiner
The exam takes place at the school, the students have access to the internet, and they have three and a half hours to read the prompt, write their paper and hand it in anonymously.
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______________
Danish
______________________________________
Test with access to the internet
You must choose one of these assignments:
1. Digital bullying
2. Stranded between Svendborg and Ærø 3. Prince or princess?
4. Humour Before you write
1. Essay 2. Blog entry 3. Commentary
4. Background article
Reading path a)
Reading path b)
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June 2019
2. Stranded between Svendborg and Ærø
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Findings, constellation analysis
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June 2019
The writing prompt is characterized by :
Double genre expectations: Autobiographical self (Ivanič, 2012) writing paper addressing an unknown external examiner AND constructing a fictional writing self blogging from a stranded ferry to the readers of the school blog
Conflicting disciplinary discourses
Ambiguity in e.g. multimodal cohesion
How does this position the student writer?
Generally and theoretically?
Anna in particular?
22. maj 2017
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In general: Writing at the final examination is…
A specific and situated act of writing – mainly strategic but pretending to be communicative (Berge 1988) in a fictional situational context.
For this strategic act to be successful, the student must accept the fictional framing and pretend to be performing a communicative act imbedded in the strategic act = The
intentionality of the text must be double.
The student must construct a double discoursal self – as a student answering the prompt AND as a fictional writer of e.g. a school blog – in a way that is recognizable in the cultural context of the writing exam.
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June 2019
Writing at the final exam is… (2)
The student writer must recontextualize the required genres into the cultural context of the writing exam. As Berge (1988) has pointed out, writing an essay at school is different from writing an essay in another context. One has to write an essay in a way that is acceptable in the school context.
This is not pointed out explicitly in the prompt which might indicate a challenge – especially to less skilled students.
The Danish writing prompt is an invitation you can’t refuse. But it is difficult to figure out what you are invited to.
To be recognized in the text culture of the examination, you will have to handle this ambiguity through text, as answer to the writing prompt.
n
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Student paper as answer to the prompt (in
anticipation of an answer)
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June 2019
Anna’s paper
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Anna’s paper
‘strategic creativity’
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June 2019
Emre’s paper
‘spontaneous narration’
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Thank you
for your attention!
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June 2019
References
Bakhtin, M. M. (1986). The Problem of Speech Genres. In C. Emerson & M. Holmquist (Eds.), Speech genres and other late essays Austin: University of Texas Press.
Barton, D., Hamilton, M., & Ivanič, R. (2000). Situated literacies: Reading and writing in context: Psychology Press.
Krogh, E. (2018). Crossing the Divide Between Writing Cultures. I K. S. Miller, & M. Stevenson (red.), Transitions in Writing (s. 72-104). Leiden/Boston: Brill. Studies in Writing, Bind. 36 https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004348905-005
Krogh, E. & Jakobsen, K. (Ed.)(2019). Understanding Young People's Writing Development. London: Routledge, https://doi.org/10.4324/9781351010894
Troelsen, S. (2018). En invitation man ikke kan afslå – analyse af afgangsprøven i skriftlig fremstilling med særligt fokus på skriveordren [An Invitation You Can’t Refuse: An Analysis of the Writing Prompt for the Final Exams in Written Composition]. Nordic Journal of Literacy Research, 4(1), 142-166. doi:10.23865/njlr.v4.1267
