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Elements for a Diagnosis of the Spanish Educational System 2 - Academic performance (continued) ![]() ![]() ![]() |
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By type of texts, the utility texts are the easiest to understand and the literary ones the most difficult, the informative ones lying between. This result perhaps shows that not enough attention is paid to literary texts in class, so there should perhaps be an increase in the emphasis on more frequent use of such texts.
In Reading Comprehension the national average obtained from the tests on 14 year old students was 220.52 points, located between the anchor points of 200 and 250. This means that the average 14 year old student is able to perform the tasks linked to level 200 and has not yet reached those for point 250. As to the 16 year old students, the national average was 271.15, disc is almost 51 points above that for age 14, thus lying between 250 and 300.
Table 2 shows the definitions of the performance levels in Reading Comprehension specifying what the students are able to comprehend in each one of the levels. It also shows the percentages of students located in each level and the percentage of students who exceed each level and the previous ones (it is always understood that a student placed on a specific level passes the skills of the lower levels).
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On the other hand, the results show that the easiest tasks for students aged 14 are those related to identification of the meaning of words, main themes and ideas related to texts with a simple construction. The most difficult tasks for these students are identification of the implicit meanings and double meanings which are not clearly stated therein.
Aged 16, the easiest tasks are those requiring identification of the meaning of the theme in the sample text, or of the main ideas set out in paragraphs or texts, as well as those implying recognition of the author’s thesis or posture. The most difficult tasks for students aged 16 are those related to understanding of idioms, that are not very usual in the daily context of these students.
The most important result, aged 14, is that stating that 69% of the students passes performance level 200, which implies that they are able to understand the meaning of specific statements in utility texts, the information in informative texts to solve problems, the meaning of specific words, the theme or main idea of texts and the time sequence in utility texts. However, 31% does not reach that level, which implies that almost a third of the students are not able to recognise the main theme of a text and finds it difficult to establish a time sequence in the action in utility texts.
The percentage of students aged 14 who do not reach the level of 250 is 75%. Three quarters of Spanish students aged 14 thus have difficulties in integrating the information in the texts and to produce a new one, as well as to interpret the main ideas or evaluate the elements of rhetoric.
A positive evolution is noted between 14 and 16, although the levels reached at that age do not imply a consistent improvement. Thus, 73% of the students aged 16 pass the level 250, so they are able to understand the meaning of abstract or infrequent words, the double meaning used in literary texts, the literal meaning (the central idea, the characters, the author’s thesis), the main ideas in texts, the rhetoric values in informative texts and the information in informative and literary texts to obtain a new one. One must not forget, however, that 27% of the students do not achieve these objectives.
The percentage of students of 16 who do not reach level 300 amounts to 77%. These students have difficulties in interpreting secondary ideas or in recognising double meaning and the figured sense of some texts.
Attention will also have to be paid to the marginal percentages, upward and downward. We ascertained, for use 14 and 16, the presence of a minority of students (5% in both cases) who seem completely beyond any reading learning and thus in severe inferiority. At the high end of the scale, scarcely 2% of the students of both ages clearly seem to stand out from the whole.
GRAMMAR AND LITERATUREEvaluation of Grammar and Literature was based on analysis of the morphology, syntaxis, lexis and semantics, and knowledge of types of texts. The morphology block concerns the form and function of words. Syntaxis the structure and type of sentences. The lexical and semantic concerns vocabulary, classes of words and lexical levels (technical, cultured and vulgar vocabulary, etc.) and the meaning of words (monosemy, homonyms, synonyms, etc.). Text typology covers the subject of text classification according to purpose (description, narration, argumentation, etc.). Table 3 shows the average percentage of correct answers by students aged 14 and 16 in Grammar and Literature.
Table 4 shows the definitions of the performance levels in Grammar and Literature, specifying the schools and knowledge the students are able to master in each one of the levels. They also show the percentage of students located in each level and the percentage of students who pass each level and the lower ones.
Among those aged 16 the easiest tasks were those involving recognition of whole sentences, knowledge of synonyms of specific words and identification of adverbs and transitive verbs. However, these students had difficulties to deal with matters requiring some syntactical functions (mainly when faced with subordinate or complex sentences), substitution of sentences of similar content, the content of theory and history of literature (especially to recognise the characteristics of the literary periods and the dramatic and poetic genres). In general, it seems to be easier for students aged 16 to deal with cognitive operations related to application of rules than those related to knowledge of different contents. The analysis of the results on the performance scale is not positive. Although 74% of the students aged 14 obtained more than 200 points, the fact is that only 46% are able to solve related matters that require identification of words in sentences as nouns and recognition of synonyms, and 26% showed no skill or knowledge whatsoever in these areas. The result shows that, evidently most of the students do not reach the minimum level required for that age. Otherwise, almost 72% of the students do net reach level 250, what means they have difficulties in grammar to recognise the non personal verb forms of irregular conjugation, polysemy, antonyms, to identify a grammatical sentence or properly assign the functions of the subject and direct complement in simple sentences. As to literature, they have difficulties to recognise the literary subgenres and identify their characteristics. A certain amount of progress is noted in the situation at the age of 16, as the average rises 41 points. However, only 64% of the students of that age are able to recognise the non personal verb forms of the irregular conjugation and the phenomena of polysemy and antonyms, identifying the latter in text analysis, of understanding logical-semantical parallelisms, of identifying the grammatical sentence as a linguistic unit, of knowing the modules of sentences, of assigning direct subject and complement functions to the nominal syntagma in simple sentences, to know the definition of major verse in Spanish metre and the features that identify fable and comedy, of associating the title of a classical novel with the subgenre to which it belongs. This also means that almost 36% do not reach this level, thus ignoring all these points. If the target we set were that for level 300, 76% of the students would not reach it, as they show their difficulties in identifying nouns, assigning the function of attribute to a nominal syntagma, identifying subordination in complex sentences or knowing the main elements of a narration; and as to literature, they have difficulties in applying the rules to calculate the syllables in verses, or to determine the rhyme and type of stanza, or to recognise significant poets of the 17th century as contemporaries. In general, the results must be qualified as alarming, as, along with the 26% of students aged 14 mentioned, 8% of the students aged 15 show no capacity or knowledge in these areas. At the highest end of the performance scale, only 3% of the students aged 16 reach the 350 level, which involves more complex tasks and relatively solid Grammar and Literature content. |
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This table shows that the students, those aged 14 as well as 16, have notorious difficulties with accents, as well as in correct spelling using the letters "d", "b"/"v", "g"/"j", "x"/"s" and "y"/"ll", the use of upper or lower case, and the hyphen to separate words. It is obvious that the average number of mistakes in these categories, more than 6 spelling mistakes and almost 8 wrong accents on average at the age of 14 in a 71 word text shows very poor performance in the learning of spelling. At the age of 16, the average mistakes decrease, so there is thus progress between these two ages. However, the averages of spelling and accent mistakes, almost four for the former and more than five for the second, for a 71 word text, also shows a much lower performance than would be desirable.
Table 4 shows the average number of mistakes and percentage of students who fail according to the type of spelling difficulty for ages 14 and 16.
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The results are proven to be very poor in terms of the mistake average by type of mistake. Moreover, they show that the majority of students have severe difficulty in the use of accents and the letter "h". This is clear if one bears in mind that, on one hand, 98% of students aged 14 and 95% of students aged 16 made at least one mistake related to the tilde, and on the other, 89% of the students aged 14 and 72% aged 16 made at least one mistake related to the use of the "h". They also have considerable difficulties with the letters "y"/"ll" and mistakes in changing letters and words.
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