AS 91475B Annotated exemplars

This annotated exemplar is intended for teacher use only. Annotated exemplars are extracts of student evidence, with commentary, that explain key parts of a standard. These help teachers make assessment judgements at the grade boundaries.

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TKI English assessment resources (external link)

For Excellence, the student needs to produce a selection of fluent and coherent writing which develops, sustains, and structures ideas and commands attention.

This involves demonstrating a sophisticated understanding of audience through the insightful selection and integration of ideas, language features and structure to create a striking whole.

This student has produced a fictional narrative about interpersonal relationships and perceived risk in an outdoor education context which commands attention. Sustained and generally effective ideas about danger and risk have been developed through the integration of dialogue, description and the character’s reflection.

Language features such as repetition (1), use of first person narrative (2), and syntax for effect (3) are selected to create a coherent, fluent text. Diction, imagery and descriptive detail evoke setting and build the personality and mood of characters, particularly in the first two paragraphs. The piece becomes a striking whole by integrating foreshadowing (4) and details, revealing character and creating plot complication (5).

For a more secure Excellence, the student could balance the plot driven text by developing the underlying ideas about the importance of interpersonal relationships in a more original and sophisticated way.

For Merit, the student needs to produce a selection of fluent and coherent writing which develops, sustains, and structures ideas and is convincing.

This involves demonstrating discerning understanding of purpose and audience through the discriminating selection and integration of ideas, language features, and structure.

This student has produced a fluent, coherent and convincing short story that sustains a central idea about an intelligent but disengaged teenager, aware of conflicting appearances and reality in human interaction.

Language features are integrated with effective structures to create a convincingly fluent, coherent story. There is a discriminating selection and use of narrative description (1) and a balance of an internal stream of consciousness with dialogue (2). The integration of language begins to command attention, e.g. descriptive details, humour, formal and colloquial diction, imagery (3).

The selection and integration of a performance motif convincingly sustains the central idea (4).  Altogether, this shows a discerning understanding of purpose and audience for this type of text.

To reach Excellence, the student could insightfully integrate effective structures and language with ideas by exploring reasons behind the narrator’s disengagement.

For Merit, the student needs to produce a selection of fluent and coherent writing which develops, sustains, and structures ideas and is convincing.

This involves demonstrating discerning understanding of purpose and audience through the discriminating selection and integration of ideas, language features, and structure.

This student has produced a fluent and coherent piece of column writing about the changing nature of the classic kiwi bach that is sufficiently convincing. The ideas are sustained and structurally integrated by describing and contrasting past and present experiences of the Kiwi holidaymakers (1), physical changes (2) and linking these to freedom and memory (3).

This becomes a convincing fluent and coherent text by the discriminating selection and integration of language features such as contrast (1), balancing personal anecdotes with more generalised observation (4), transitions and syntax. Ideas of the bach are linked through language selection (e.g. humour, descriptive detail, specific cultural reference, listing, pronouns and parallel construction).

For a more secure Merit, the student could make a more discriminating integration of ideas and language features by exploring in greater depth what it means to “know our past to build our future” (5).

For Achieved, the student needs to produce a selection of fluent and coherent writing which develops, sustains, and structures ideas.

This involves demonstrating understanding of purpose and audience. This is through the development of linked ideas and use of accurate structures and language features to create consistent meaning and effect for sustained interest.

This student has produced a fluent and coherent short story about unexpectedly taking part in a community parade. The central idea about the narrator overcoming her self-consciousness and bonding with her father has been sufficiently sustained and structured through a discerning use of character development (1), (2), (3) & (4).

Appropriate language features are selected to create consistency in meaning and effect. This sustains interest with some discrimination in places by the use of a humorous personal voice, descriptive detail, diction, irony (5). Effective structures create a coherent text through transitions, the chicken motif (6) and rising tension reaching comical ironic resolution (7).

To reach Merit, the student could develop the father-daughter relationship by integrating it with details of the parade, so that it becomes generally convincing.

For Achieved, the student needs to produce a selection of fluent and coherent writing which develops, sustains, and structures ideas.

This involves demonstrating understanding of purpose and audience. This is through the development of linked ideas and use of accurate structures and language features to create consistent meaning and effect for sustained interest.

This student has produced a fluent and coherent short story about a strained mother/daughter relationship.  A central idea is sufficiently developed, sustained and structured about the sense of tension between a mother and daughter (1) and its resolution (2).

Language features and structures are selected and used to create consistency in meaning and effect and to generally sustain interest. A coherent text is created through the use of a language features such as personal voice, descriptive detail, diction and syntax (3), (4). The plot structure is consistent with this type of text.

For a more secure Achieved, the student could sustain ideas further by describing the tension in the shop and making links to the reasons behind the mother’s sudden change in attitude. More consistent selection of language in places (5) could improve the fluency of the piece. 

For Achieved, the student needs to produce a selection of fluent and coherent writing which develops, sustains, and structures ideas.

This involves demonstrating understanding of purpose and audience. This is through the development of linked ideas and use of accurate structures and language features to create consistent meaning and effect for sustained interest.

This student has produced a short story about a man suffering from grief and regret as a consequence of a fatal drink-driving car accident. A central idea is developed, structured, and sustained by the use of details and imagery to describe a man traumatised by a past event (1), his past (2), and revealing his thoughts and emotions (3).

Effective structures, appropriate to short story conventions, begin to create a coherent text. The student uses an introduction to create interest, transitions to signal the shift from memory to flashback and abruptly back to the present (4), repetition of some details to create a sense of unity and time passing (5), and an ending twist for impact.

To reach Achieved, the student could develop fluency by using language features to create consistency in meaning and effect, and to sustain interest (6).