Maltese children's use and understanding of English, in the late primary years

Abstract

The aim of this research was to assess Year 5 children's proficiency in using and understanding English, in the local context. The study was conducted with 103 Maltese students, attending a state primary school in the south of Malta. These children were assessed at the beginning and end of Year 5, for reading accuracy and comprehension, as assessed by Macmillan's Individual Reading Analysis, for receptive vocabulary, as assessed by British Picture Vocabulary Scale, for recall of information, sentence length and use of subordinate clauses, as assessed by The Bus Story, and for reading words in isolation, as assessed by Keywords List. MANOV A for repeated measures was used to analyse the results obtained in these tests. The independent variables were streaming, sex and occasions of testing. Interviews with a sample of 25 children were conducted, to establish what perceptions they have towards learning English. Interviews were conducted with the Year 5 class teachers, to consider how English is taught. Results indicated that streaming determined the children's linguistic competence. There were statistically significant differences in streaming as a main effect and streaming by measures, as a first order interaction. No sex differences occurred on any of the dependent measures.