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The evaluation of undergraduate students’ written English language skills
Author(s) -
ChurHansen Anna,
VerRoberts Jane
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
medical education
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.776
H-Index - 138
eISSN - 1365-2923
pISSN - 0308-0110
DOI - 10.1046/j.1365-2923.2000.00539.x
Subject(s) - formative assessment , test (biology) , scale (ratio) , medical education , psychology , mathematics education , construct validity , rating scale , construct (python library) , consistency (knowledge bases) , language assessment , psychological intervention , pedagogy , medicine , computer science , psychometrics , clinical psychology , developmental psychology , paleontology , physics , quantum mechanics , artificial intelligence , psychiatry , biology , programming language
Context Writing is an important skill for practitioners and students, yet this is a skill rarely taught in a formal capacity at medical school. At the University of Adelaide many students are from non‐English speaking backgrounds and have varying proficiencies in English. We wished to devise a method and instrument which could identify students who may benefit from formative feedback and tuition in writing. Objectives and method Students’ written account of a short clinical interview with a standardized patient was assessed using a new instrument (the Written Language Rating Scale) designed especially for this study. The assessment of writing was made by one rater with qualifications in teaching English as a second language. Subjects 127 second‐year medical students enrolled at the University of Adelaide, Australia. Instruments and results The scale appeared to have good internal consistency, face and construct validity, and test security was not an issue. However, it had questionable concurrent validity with a standardized language test, although this may be partly due to the period of time which had elapsed between administration of the two tests. Conclusions This study was useful in providing a means to objectively rate students’ written English language skills and to target students in need of formative feedback and tuition. However, further research is necessary for both evaluation of medical writing and interventions for its improvement.