Mirja Tarnanen

Creating a self-rating instrument for second language writing: from idea to implementation

This article reports on the development of a self-rating instrument for writing. The instrument engages learners in responding to a writing task and assessing their own proficiency against a set of benchmarks. The technical and conceptual framework for the instrument is the DIALANG project, a diagnostic language assessment system for 14 languages on the internet. The report comprises a description of the self-rating procedure, an account of instrument development, a report on a usability study with six learners of Finnish as a second language, and our test-developer analysis of the process and products of the self-rating instrument. The data consists of records of task and benchmark development, participant background data, the texts that the learners wrote, video recordings of their screen actions during the self-rating process, immediate retrospective interviews with the learners, and teacher ratings of the learner texts. The discussion concentrates on the concepts that underlie the self-rating process and the potential offered by this approach for the learning, teaching, and assessment of second language writing.

Assessing learners’ writing skills in a SLA study: Validating the rating process across tasks, scales and languages

There is still relatively little research on how well the CEFR and similar holistic scales work when they are used to rate L2 texts. Using both multifaceted Rasch analyses and qualitative data from rater comments and interviews, the ratings obtained by using a CEFR-based writing scale and the Finnish National Core Curriculum scale for L2 writing were examined to validate the rating process used in the study of the linguistic basis of the CEFR in L2 Finnish and English. More specifically, we explored the quality of the ratings and the rating scales across different tasks and across the two languages. As the task is an integral part of the data-gathering procedure, the relationship of task peformance across the scales and languages was also examined. We believe the kinds of analyses reported here are also relevant to other SLA studies that use rating scales in their data-gathering process.

Interaction of Language Policy and Assessment in Finland.

This paper reviews developments and future challenges in language policy, planning and assessment in Finland, where several important changes in legislation, curricula and assessment systems have recently taken place. Language proficiency requirement of immigrants and civil servants have been redefined, school curricula have been revised and new language examinations have been developed. The Common European Framework has been particularly influential. The paper also explores the tensions caused by changes, such as uncertainties in implementing new curricula in teaching and assessment, and differences between curricula and national examinations. The gate-keeping function of examinations also raises questions about social and educational consequences, especially for immigrants.

Exploring teachers’ stories of writing: a narrative perspective

ABSTRACT This study takes a narrative perspective to examine teachers as writers and autobiographical creative writing as a way for promoting teachers’ professional development. In a creative writing group for Finnish primary and secondary school teachers, the teachers expressed themselves and explored their lives and identities through autobiographical creative writing. The aim of this study was to examine the stories the teachers tell about their relationship to writing and the goals they set for their professional and personal development in the writing group. Through thematic analysis, seven descriptive themes were found in teachers’ narratives of writing. Furthermore, based on the narrative analysis, a poem-like word image was composed. This study illustrates how literary methods diversify teachers’ narratives. The findings shed light on teachers as creative writers and emphasise the connection between writing and well-being. Creative writing groups can be beneficial for teachers’ professional development, identity work and well-being.

Finnish teachers as policy agents in a changing society

Abstract As policy agents, teachers are involved in representing and reproducing language education policies in their talk, practices and classroom interaction. Contemporary Finland and its education system are experiencing times of change from the increased globalisation and dynamic flows of migration. This has affected the most recent Finnish curriculum reform for compulsory education, which to a greater extent than before promotes multilingualism. In this article, we explore how Finnish teachers reflect language policies in the two most recent curricula [Finnish National Board of Education (FNBE 2004 and FNBE 2014)] and how teachers (re)produce ideologies of language and multilingualism. The findings, based on a meta-ethnography and discourse analysis of four recent studies, show that teachers acknowledged multilingual children’s language competencies but rarely made use of them in the classroom. Teachers expressed the belief that the use of other languages than the language of schooling might impede language learning, and they discursively distinguished between us and them in terms of cultural practices, nation and language. Teachers’ talk reflected the previous curriculum and was not yet aligned with current national education policy. In order to have some effect on persistent monolingual ideologies in schools, teachers’ role as (re)makers of language policy should be taken more seriously.

Negotiating language across disciplines in pre-service teacher collaboration

Abstract In multilingual learning settings, in order to provide optimal learning conditions for all learners and support both disciplinary and language knowledge development, subject teachers need knowledge on and understanding of how language is used to construct meanings in their discipline and how to scaffold learning from the premise of learners’ current skills. In this article, we report a descriptive case study of two teaching interventions carried out in pre-service subject teacher practice. Student teachers of science and ethics collaborated with student teachers of Finnish language and literature to plan and implement thematic units that focused on particular disciplinary phenomena and the language and project skills needed in exploring those phenomena in a multilingual and multicultural teaching setting. Audio-recorded planning sessions and interviews of teacher students were analysed using thematic analysis and discourse analysis to identify emerging discourses reflecting their pedagogical language knowledge. The student teachers seemed to approach language mainly as bounded sets of linguistic resources, and various means for meaning-making were used to a large extent separately without strategic consideration. Spoken language in particular was unconscious, unanalysed, and considered a self-explanatory means for meaning-making.

Chapter 2.03.02: Designing and Assessing L2 Writing Tasks Across CEFR Proficiency Levels

With the advent of the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) for the learning, teaching and assessment of modern languages, there have been renewed calls for the integration of the research perspectives of language testing and second language acquisition across Europe. The project Cefling was set up in 2006 with this purpose in mind. In the project our aim is to describe the features of language that L2 learners use at various levels of language proficiency defined by the CEFR scales. For this purpose, L2 Finnish and L2 English data were collected from young and adult L2 learners by using a set of communicative L2 writing tasks. In the course of the project, the different understandings of what the purpose of an L2 writing task is needed to be reconciled not only in the minds of researchers but also in research design. In what follows, we will discuss the issues involved in designing and assessing L2 tasks for SLA and language testing purposes by using the design and assessment procedures in the project as a case in point. We will also present some of our findings to illustrate how statistical procedures such as multifaceted Rasch analysis can be used to examine task difficulty.