The development of orthography performance in the GDR its and assessment: an investigation based on Abitur essays (1949–1989)

Abstract

In this paper, the spelling/grammar subscore is used to investigate how the spelling and grammar performance of GDR A-Level graduates has developed. For this purpose, N=1195 Abitur essays from the school years 1957/58 to 1988/89, a newly indexed, unique corpus comprising of two partial datasets from different regions were analyzed. The results point to a continuous improvement in scores as well as a continuous decrease in the number of spelling and grammatical mistakes. The quality of performance evaluation as well as performance assessment by teachers is analyzed in detail on the basis of a sample of N=50 essays. Subsequently, possible reasons for the improved performance and what impact the role of the teachers’ assessment quality might make here are discussed.