Writing Proficiency of Students from Different Ethnic Groups

Abstract

The present research work entitled 'Writing Proficiency of Students from Different Ethnic Groups' has been carried out to find out and explain the English language writing proficiency of grade eight students of Kathmandu district. In order to compare the proficiency of the various ethnic groups in writing items, especially mechanics, guided and free writing included in the text book of grade eight. Five ethnic groups, Hill-Brahmin, Chhetri, Newar, Gurung and Tamang students were selected randomly and the rest purposively. The students selected under this study were altogether one hundred in number; twenty from each of five ethnic groups studying at the public schools of Kathmandu district. The schools were selected purposively. Three sets of questions from the English textbook for grade eight were prepared selecting altogether five items consisting of 10% questions on mechanics, 50% on guided writing and 40% on free writing. A set of question was developed and administered to 100 students and their responses were collected and studied. It was found that the Hill-Brahmin students were more proficient in writing proficiency items than the other groups, whereas the students from the Tamang ethnicity were found to be the least proficient. The Chhetri, Newar, Gurung and Tamang; according to the proficiency of writing were second, third, fourth and fifth respectively. The present work is divided into four chapters. The first chapter includes general background, ethnicity, ethnicity in Nepal, definition and stages of writing, the essential characteristics of good writing, importance of writing, review of related literature, objectives of the study and significance of the study. The second chapter deals with the methodology which includes sources of data, population of the study, sample population, sampling process, tools of data collection, process of data collection and limitation of the study. The third chapter is concerned with the analysis and interpretation of the data such as item-wise analysis, analysis of writing proficiency on the basis of mechanics of writing, guided writing and free writing, and overall comparison of writing proficiency interms of different ethnic groups. In order to make the analysis objective, and accurate statistical tools of average and percentage have been used. The fourth chapter presents about the findings of the research study and finally some recommendations have been made on the basis of those findings. The references and students' answer sheets are given in the appendices.