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,
postcards, descriptions, email messages and text messages.
Twelve tasks were
identical for year 4 and year 8 students and two were administered only
to year 8 students. Five are
trend tasks (fully described with data for both 1998 and 2002), three
are released tasks (fully described with data for 2002 only), and six
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 8 students.
Averaged across 105 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 performed better on 98 of the 105 components.
One task, filling in a survey, was done very well and showed little difference
between year 4 and year 8 students.
Trend analyses showed no change since 1998 for year 8 students but a marginal
performance reduction for year 4 students (arising entirely from one of
the four tasks involved). Averaged across 41 task components attempted
by year 4 students in both years, 2.5 percent fewer students succeeded
in 2002 than in 1998 (9 percent fewer on Accident Report but
1 percent more on the other three tasks). Gains occurred on 12 components
and losses on 24 components (including 12 of the 13 for Accident Report).
At year 8 level, students performed equally in 2002 and 1998. Gains occurred
on 20 components and losses on 20 components, with no difference on the
one remaining component.
|
