Exploring strategies in-use for teaching and assessing narrative writing of grade five students belonging to a government primary school of Bin Qasim town, Karachi
Date of Award
9-2022
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Master of Education (M. Ed.)
First Supervisor/Advisor
Ms. Mirat al Fatima Ahsan
Department
Institute for Educational Development, Karachi
Abstract
Mastery over English language writing skills is considered a necessity in this highly competitive information age (Hyland, 2015; Nunan, 2015). Therefore, the Pakistani education system puts great emphasis on the development of the English language writing skills as the National Curriculum (2006) and the current Single National Curriculum (2020) for grades I-V urge students to produce many genres of writing such as narrative, descriptive, expository, and argumentative texts. Narrative writing is considered most appropriate for building fluency and mechanics in young children as they already have basic knowledge of storytelling when their parents or teachers start narrating fairy tales, fables, and myths (Westby & Culatta, 2016; Yuskar, 2021). Considering the importance of narrative writing skills, this study was carried out to explore the strategies of teaching and assessing narrative writing of grade five students of a government boys’ primary school situated in a rural context of Karachi i.e. Bin Qasim Town, which is a multilingual context but where access and exposure to the target language, to English, is limited.
This research was conducted using an exploratory case study method. One grade five English language teacher and six grade five students of the target school participated in this study. The data was collected through individual interview, focus group discussion, classroom observations, and document analysis. Study findings reveal that traditional methods of teaching and assessment are being used for teaching and assessing students' narrative writing skills in the language classroom of the school serving as the research site. In addition, the findings of the study highlight that grade five students are not given sufficient opportunities to participate in the process of writing texts. Consequently, there are various challenges that these grade five students appear to face while learning different genres of writing skills, including narrative writing skills. In fact, the severity of the situation can be gauged from the fact no evidence was found in the study that indicated that students of Grade V in the research site are able to produce independent narrative texts of their own. Therefore, this study recommends policy responses such as providing professional development courses for government school grade five English language teachers to teach and assess narrative writing skills so they can actually help grade five students to enhance their narrative writing skills and become independent writers.
Recommended Citation
Magsi, K. M. H. (2022). Exploring strategies in-use for teaching and assessing narrative writing of grade five students belonging to a government primary school of Bin Qasim town, Karachi [M. Ed. Dissertation]. Aga Khan University.