The focus of this chapter is on expressive writing, in which students were given freedom to write inventively, within task guidelines. Characteristics sought included ability to write coherently, to communicate personal feeling, to communicate stories or ideas vividly, and to follow conventions associated with particular forms of writing (such as poetry).

The results for ten tasks are reported here. Seven of these were identical for both year 4 and year 8. One task was administered only to year 4 students, and two tasks were administered only to year 8 students. Six tasks were administered using the stations approach, one using the team approach, and three using the independent approach.

One of the latter was administered across sessions (usually on three different days).

Three of the tasks have been selected as link tasks (to be used again in the year 2002) and therefore are not described in detail here. The link tasks were all attempted by both year 4 and year 8 students. The other seven tasks are released tasks for which full details are given.

The tasks are presented in the following order:

Considering the seven tasks which allowed comparisons of the performance of year 4 and year 8 students, on average 27 percent more year 8 students than year 4 students gained high scores. The margin of superiority ranged from 13 percent of students on one of these tasks to 41 percent of students on another. Medium proportions of year 4 students and higher proportions of year 8 students followed the task guidelines quite well, but most students were less able to achieve the vividness, personal feeling or humour that distinguished top quality writing.