Relooking at the ESL Reading Comprehension Assessment for Malaysian Primary Schools | #journalsummary

 

Holaa…

I come up with another journal discussing English Language Teaching.

This journal focused on assessing Malaysian Primary Schools in comprehending texts in English.

 

Relooking at the ESL Reading Comprehension Assessment for Malaysian Primary Schools

Chang Kuan Lim (Correspondence author)

Source : English Language Teaching, Vol. 11, No.7, 22 June 2018

Published by Canadian Center of Science and Education.

A.    Summary of the content

This journal is to have a relook at the ESL reading comprehension assessment system for Malaysian Year Five students. The participants are 16 primary schools categorized as Band 1 schools, Band 2 schools, Band 3 schools, and Band 4 schools from the district of Larut, Matang, and Selama in Perak. This study involves four main steps to develop the ESL reading comprehension assessment system. The first is the development of standardized generic reading comprehension. The second is the development of the reading matrix. The next one is the development of reading performance and the last is testing the ESL reading comprehension assessment system.

English is taught as a second language in all Malaysian public schools. Primary schools students are taught reading comprehension in the ESL classroom. Reading comprehension is a cognitive process. It is an individual interaction with the text. It is disadvantageous for individuals who possess poor reading ability. The aim of an assessment is not for judging the students but to provide feedback by identifying their strengths and weaknesses.

Developing a module involves a variety of steps, tasks, and skills. The module consists of some strategies and activities. It helps the teachers to introduce higher-order thinking skills to develop students’ writing skills. The module is designed according to the syllabus. The researchers also include some types of essays such as descriptive, essay, and argumentative essays.

The result of the research is the students enjoy the techniques of the HOTS. It helps them to write better. Analysis of interview data shows that the students prefer the HOTS module as it assists them in writing. On the other hand, the teachers get lots of benefits from this research. They become more aware of their role as facilitators of learning.

 

B.     Discussion

                The journal is talking about developing higher-order thinking skills for weak ESL learners. It gives lots of information. It tells us the struggle of the students in writing skills. It discusses the new technique with a module of HOTS. The journal gives some shreds of evidence that the module is an effective way. Based on the result of the research, the module is designed according to the syllabus. It can be used as a guideline and will help the teachers to enhance the students writing skills. In my point of view, it is very informative but in some parts, I cannot understand what the author means. The journal presents the table results of the research and it helps the readers to understand.