Assessment of high school Haitian and Chilean students’ writing by Language and Literature teachers in Chile

Abstract

The goal of this work is to examine the way Language teachers assess their Spanish as a Foreign Language secondary Haitian students’ writing, based both on linguistic criteria and assessment principles. In the framework of interlanguage analysis, texts written in Spanish by secondary Haitian and Spanish speaking students were collected and assessed by both their own Language teachers and external evaluators. Texts written in creole were also collected and assessed by a Haitian teacher. Students were given similar scores by their Language teachers. However, a scheme applied by the external evaluators yielded contradictory results. It was found that principles of assessment were not met, which shows the need to prepare Language school teachers to offer their students useful feedback that contributes to the development of interlanguage and better performance in school subjects.