English in Gaelscoileanna: How does school type impact English writing performance? by Cliodhna Nolan Marino Institute

Abstract

The educational landscape of Ireland has been rapidly changing in recent decades, especially in relation to how we view and how we teach Irish. One of the most noteworthy changes is the growth of Irish-immersion schools, or Gaelscoileanna, in both urban and rural areas. As a result of this growth, Irish pupils' achievement in the Irish language has been the subject of much research, which has sparked amendments in the way Irish is being taught in primary schools. However, until recently, there was no differentiated curriculum for the provision of English in Irish-immersion or Gaeltacht schools. For many years there were no guidelines available to teachers as to how to approach the instruction of English in these school types. It seemed there was a need to investigate how these children perform in English, as they receive considerably less instruction time in English than in English-medium schools. Fifty writing samples were generated and collected from two different school types; an Irish-immersion school and an English-medium school. These writing samples were analysed using a writing analysis tool designed by Mackenzie, Scull and Munzie (2013) in order to gain a deeper understanding of how children learn to write in English across different school types in Ireland. The study revealed noticeable differences amongst the writing samples from the children from the two different school types, namely that the Irish-immersion participants scored higher across all categories tested in the study. The writing analysis tool was successful in identifying children's strengths and weaknesses in English writing performance, however further study involving a larger sample size would be helpful to gain a more accurate insight to the differences in English writing performance across school types.