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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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