Grade Eight Students' Ability in Essay Writing

Abstract

The present study entitled “Grade Eight Students’ Ability in Essay Writing” attempted to find out descriptive essay writing proficiency of grade eight students and compare the private and the public schools. For this study, eighty students studying in the private and public schools were selected. In order to collect relevant data, a set of test tasks was administered to the students. It was found that the writing proficiency of the grade eight students was satisfactory. Most of the students were above average. In holistic analysis, 56.25%were above average and 43.75% were below average in their performance. The writing proficiency of the students of private schools was found better than that of the students of public schools. Similarly, writing proficiency of girls was found better than that of the boys in both private and public schools.

This thesis is divided into four chapters. Chapter one introduces the study in terms of general background, writing skill, essay writing, review of the related literature, objectives and significance of the study. Chapter two deals with the methodology that includes sources of data, population of the study, sample population, tools for data collection, process of data collection and limitations of the study. Chapter third is the core of the study, which presents statistical analysis and interpretation of the data such as school-wise, sex-wise and item-wise analysis. Chapter four discusses the findings of the study. On the basis of findings some recommendations and pedagogical implications are drawn. The references and appendices are the concluding parts of the study.