The focus of this chapter is on functional writing. Students were asked to present information clearly and accurately in written form. They acted as reporters, gave instructions, prepared advertisements, filled in forms and wrote letters, descriptions, messages and formal reports.
Twelve tasks were identical for year 4 and year 8 students and two were administered only to year 8 students. Six are trend tasks (fully described with data for both 2002 and 2006), one is a released task (fully described with data for 2006 only) and seven are link tasks (to be used again in 2010, so only partially described here). The tasks are presented in that order.
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Averaged across 102 task components administered to both year 4 and year 8 students, 18 percent more year 8 than year 4 students succeeded with these components. Year 8 students scored higher on 89 components, lower on seven components, and no different on six components. Crunchie Survey was handled very well and showed little difference between year 4 and year 8 students
(it was also the most popular task in 2006). Most year 4 students and many year 8 students do not follow standard conventions for presenting a business letter.
Trend analyses showed a small improvement between 2002 and 2006 for year 4 students and a slight improvement for year 8 students (the latter probably too small to be judged significant). Averaged across 47 task components attempted by year 4 students in both years, just over three percent more students succeeded in 2006 than in 2002. Gains occurred on 35 components, with losses on 11 components and no change on one component. At year 8 level, again with 47 task components included in the analysis, on average two percent more students succeeded with the task components in 2006 than in 2002. Gains occurred on 29 components, with losses on nine components and no change on the remaining nine components.
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