Clarification details
Updated December 2023. This document has been updated to address issues that arose from moderation.
Selecting writing for assessment
From a range of written drafts, students select the two best pieces and craft them to publication standard. Each piece should be suitable for a public audience beyond the class teacher. The TKI tasks provide guidance on the suggested word count. If crafting shorter pieces, more than two could be submitted for assessment.
After students have reworked their best pieces to publication standard, teachers will award each piece a grade. If the pieces in the selection are different in terms of their grades (i.e. one piece best fits Merit while the other best fits Achieved), the student has met the ‘selection’ requirement at the lower grade and an overall grade of Achieved would be awarded.
It is helpful to NZQA for teachers to include comments about grade decisions for external moderation samples.
Purpose and Audience
Students need to demonstrate an increasingly sophisticated understanding of purpose and audience by developing and linking ideas. This includes selecting a range of structures and language features appropriate to the purpose, audience and text type. The accurate use of written conventions with no intrusive error patterns in spelling, punctuation or grammar is also needed.
Work produced in English or other learning areas may be used as drafts for this standard. However, students should rework the draft material into appropriate written text types for a specific purpose and audience. Student choices about language features and structures need to create consistency of meaning and effect for the selected text type.
Students must use structures, syntax and diction that meet the conventions of the text type, whether it is a literary, personal or critical essay, a feature article, or poetry, fiction, etc. This use needs to sustain the interest of the audience, which means that a fluent writing style and tone must be sustained across each piece.
Some text types, such as speech transcripts, informational reports, informative essays, letters or diary entries may limit students from demonstrating the understanding of purpose and audience appropriate to level 8 of the curriculum.