TEACHERS’ PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS IN ASSESSING STUDENTS’ WRITING IN SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL LEVEL: AUTHENTIC ASSESSMENT OR TRADITIONAL ASSESSMENT

Abstract

English is one of the core subjects at junior and senior high school in Indonesia. Writing
as the productive skill of learning English claims that the teachers have to involve in
designing the writing task or assignment and designing or adapting the scoring rubric.
Assessing students’ writing is nota simple task. The following research studies about
the teachers’ problems in assessing students’ writing at the senior high school level. The
research was conducted for the reason to investigate a further information about
teachers’ problemsand explore the solutions in assessing the students’ writing. The
research was undertaken at a well-known public senior high school in West Java,
Indonesia. This research employs a qualitative research. A semi structured interview
was used to collect the data by interviewing the English teachers in the school. The data
in the form of extended text were analyzed and interpreted to get the final results.
Assessing writing is a complex task for teachers. It was found that there are some
problems faced by the teachers in assessing students’ writing. One of which is that
teachers doesn’t have sufficient time to correct the students’ writing. Therefore, the
authentic assessment is difficult to be implemented. It is recommended that teachers
have to be aware of these problems because teachers’ judgement on students’ writing
can become a crucial feedback for students to know how well they can do on writing.