: Introduction  1996

The assessments included eight tasks which involved students in silent reading to obtain information, answer questions and make decisions.

Four of the tasks were identical for year 4 and year 8 students. The other four tasks were in effect two pairs of tasks. Each pair had similar instructions, marking procedures, and marking criteria, but differed in the stimulus materials and questions asked.

Two of the tasks are link tasks (to be used again in the year 2000) and therefore are 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 released tasks attempted by both year 4 and year 8 students;
• the released tasks attempted separately by year 4 and year 8 students;
• the two tasks which will be used as link tasks, both of which were identical for year 4 and year 8 students.

In the reading comprehension tasks, results showed that year 8 students demonstrated consistently higher levels of skill than year 4 students. When text and questions were presented with increasing complexity, the percentage of year 4 students able to handle the more demanding material declined markedly. Overall, few students were able to give full answers to questions that required them to construct and write their own answers rather than select from multiple choice options.

Results for tasks with set time limits showed that a high percentage of year 8 students and moderate percentage of year 4 students could accurately locate information, but that their ability to complete the information for every item in the task was constrained by the amount of time available. This, in turn, may suggest that many students are unable to quickly and effectively skim and scan for specific items of information.