Oral Descriptions
 : Introduction 1996
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The assessments included four speaking tasks which involved students in giving oral descriptions.

Two of the tasks were identical for year 4 and year 8 students. The other two tasks were in effect one pair of tasks. This pair had identical instructions, marking procedures, and marking criteria, but differed in one of the four stimulus materials used.

One of the tasks is a link task (to be used again in the year 2000) and therefore is not described in detail here. The other tasks are released tasks for which full details are given.

The chapter presents the assessment results in the following order:

  • the two released tasks attempted by both year 4 and year 8 students, including the task in which one of its four stimulus items was changed between year 4 and year 8.
  • the task which will be used as a link task, which was identical for year 4 and year 8 students.

The results for the released tasks show a mixed picture of student achievement. There is a close matching of percentage responses between year 4 and year 8 students on some achievement criteria and levels of performance, and reasonably large differences on others. While there is not an absolutely consistent pattern across all criteria, there is a suggestion that year 8 students are more successful in organising and sequencing the information and ideas they communicate.

The results for the link task, however, show a much clearer distinction. In this task the percentage of students demonstrating strengths in communicating information was considerably higher at year 8 than year 4. This may in part have been because students were asked to explain a process which is more likely to be familiar to year 8 students through their real life experiences.

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