Spelling is the workhorse in the teaching of the written language, a horse discussed for its usefulness in some educational sectors because computerized spell checkers can replace this function at the time of writing. Despite the pedagogical discussion, the basic skills tests evaluate the spelling correctness shown by students, both those in 6th grade of primary school and those in 4th grade of ESO. Children and adolescents who have recently joined school are not included, nor are those with cognitive disorders (dyslexia is included).
Based on the results obtained in this year's edition, which corresponds to the students who passed the test last May (and which excludes students who have just arrived as well as those who have cognitive difficulties, except dyslexia), the difficulty seems It starts in primary school and continues in secondary school.
In primary school, half of the students have low spelling skills, worse in Catalan than in Spanish. “Among the different aspects that are evaluated in written expression (appropriateness, coherence, spelling, morphosyntax and presentation), the one that obtains the lowest results continues to be spelling, with 56.6% of students who do not pass it in Catalan and 49.4% in Spanish,” indicates the Quaderns d'Avaluació 2023 report on the basic skills tests of children in 6th grade of primary school, about 12 years old, and who this year are in 1st grade of ESO. More than half in Catalan and practically half in Spanish (which has improved 10 points compared to 2022) make more than 8 mistakes in a text.
At the end of ESO, 90% of the students made at least one mistake in their Catalan writing. Or put another way, only 10% obtained the highest grade. They are the kids who are ideally 16 years old and this year they are in high school or FP. “This is the area that presents the worst results,” admits the text of the Quaderns d’Avaluació 2023 with respect to written expression. It is also the case in Spanish, more than 83% submitted the text with some error.
In Catalan, the majority of students write with few errors if a maximum of 8 errors are considered acceptable. There are 66% of the students. Of these, 31% did not make a mistake or made a mistake on less than 3 occasions. The rest (33%) exceeded 9 fouls, with a peak of 16% with more than 12 fouls.
This group of young people with many faults raised the average number of faults committed per student to 7 per text.
These results are similar to those obtained in 2022. On the other hand, in Spanish they have improved, obtaining superior performance.
The average number of absences per student in Spanish is 4.7. And eight out of ten students write with less than 8 errors. The worst performance is 5%, who write texts with more than 12 mistakes.
Spelling is one of the areas evaluated within linguistic correction, which also includes morphosyntax and vocabulary. In both, between 20 and 30 percent of students obtain 4 points out of 4.
The test is completed with the assessment of discursive competence. Half of those who presented showed full capacity to write a text suitable for the communicative purpose in Catalan, although only 35% in Spanish. On the other hand, students were less qualified when writing a cohesive text. Less than 20% obtained the maximum score in either language.
Written expression is one of the dimensions of linguistic competence that in Catalan obtained an average of 72.7 in primary school and in Spanish of 72.1. These averages are quite homogeneous throughout the territory, although differences of up to four points persist between some educational areas and others.
The schools in the city of Barcelona are the ones with the highest scores (74.4 in Catalan and 74.2 in Spanish) and have a higher percentage of excellent students than the rest. Those from Lleida, Terres de l’Ebre, Baix Llobregat and Maresme-Vallès Oriental are also more competent than average.
On the contrary, they are located under Barcelona counties, Gironés, Central Catalonia, Tarragonés. Vallès Occidental is below in Catalan, but above in Spanish.
