Skolēnu rakstu valoda latviešu valodas un vēstures valsts pārbaudes darbos 2021. gadā Kurzemē

Abstract

The research aims to examine pupils’ text creation skills in the Latvian language and history state examinations (SE). The source of the research is the examination papers of pupils in Kurzeme in the 2021 Latvian language SE (an opinion; 250 words) and history SE (task 3 of part 3 – an essay; 200 words). Examination of the evaluation criteria of both examinations shows that the evaluation criteria of the Latvian language examination pay more attention to the quality of spelling (10 points out of 34 (approx. 30%) can be obtained for orthography and punctuation). The article summarizes the main types of errors in morphology and syntax in both examinations. Several types of errors are distinguished in morphology: unjustified use of macrons or their absence, spelling of consonants, words written incorrectly together and separately, spelling of onyms, and errors in the spelling of verbs and foreign words. A number of syntactic constructions were studied in the pupils’ examination papers – coordinated parts of sentence, coordinated parts of sentence with a generalising word, participial clauses, insertions and explanatory word groups –, as wethe frequency of their use in the pupils’ examination papers and the most frequently detected cases of errors. The use of punctuation marks in the sentence, separating the subordinate clause, has also been studied. A comparison of the two examination papers leads to the conclusion that there are no statistically significant differences in the text creation task in Latvian or history SE in Kurzeme. Spelling and punctuation skills are solid, and the number of errors is equal. As pupils take the examinations, caution is observed in using more complex syntactic constructions. In the analysis, examples from pupils’ examination papers are presented in italics, preserving their style, spelling and punctuation errors.