functional writing
 : 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 for year 4 and year 8 students, two were administered only to year 4 students and two were administered only to year 8 students. Four are trend tasks (fully described with data for both 2002 and 2006) and the remaining five are link tasks (to be used again in 2010, so only partially described here). The tasks are presented in that order.

Averaged across 77 task components administered to both year 4 and year 8 students, 15 percent more year 8 than year 4 students succeeded with these components. Year 8 students performed better on all except five of the components. Punctuation of text involving speech and recognition of verbs in text (especially those associated with “to be” and “to have”) were areas of particular weakness.

A Day I will Never Forget
Trend analyses showed slight improvements between 2002 and 2006 for both year 4 and year 8 students, but these were too small to be judged significant. Averaged across 39 task components attempted by year 4 students in both years, 2.5 percent more students succeeded in 2006 than in 2002. Gains occurred on 29 components, with losses on four components and no change on six components. At year 8 level, with 63 task components included in the analysis, on average one percent more students succeeded with the task components in 2006 than in 2002. Gains occurred on 33 components, with losses on 18 components and no change on the remaining 12 components.
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