 |
: Introduction |
| The
focus of this chapter is on students’ performance in spelling, punctuation
and grammar, using tasks specifically designed for this purpose. These
skills were also assessed more indirectly within some of the tasks in Chapters
3 and 4. Five tasks were identical or almost identical for year 4 and year 8 students, one was administered only to year 4 students, and four were administered only to year 8 students. Three are trend tasks (fully described with data for both 1998 and 2002), three are released tasks (fully described with data for 2002 only), and four are link tasks (to be used again in 2006, so only partially described here). The tasks are presented in the three sections: trend tasks, then released tasks and finally link tasks. Within each section, tasks administered to both year 4 and year 8 students are presented first, followed by tasks administered only to year 4 students and then tasks administered only to year 8 students. Averaged across 58 task components administered to both year 4 and year 8 students, 19 percent more year 8 than year 4 students succeeded with these components. Year 8 students performed better on all except three of the components. The results revealed considerable scope for improvement in punctuation, spelling and grammar at both age levels. Trend analyses involved only one punctuation task for year 4 students and two very similar spelling tasks for year 8 students. This clearly is insufficient to allow trends in the use of writing conventions to be judged adequately. Averaged across the 10 components of one punctuation task attempted by year 4 students in both years, 3 percent fewer students succeeded in 2002 than in 1998. At year 8 level, with 26 task components of two spelling tasks included in the analysis, performance was unchanged between 1998 and 2002. |
|
 |
 |
|