The national monitoring task frameworks developed by the National Education Monitoring Project (NEMP) have two key purposes. They provide a guideline structure for the development and selection of tasks which are then used as the basis for the analyses of students’ knowledge, understandings and skills.
Constructing and communicating meaning in written forms for various purposes and audiences is the central organising theme of the NEMP writing framework. The understanding aspect of the framework summarises important ideas about writing; the purposes aspect identifies why we write – to inform, to entertain and to persuade; the skills aspect lists necessary planning, composing, editing and presenting skills required to write; and the motivation aspect highlights the importance of motivation and attitude to writing.
The Writing Framework identifies several understandings relevant to the 1998 “My Place” task analysed, and the subsequent Trend tasks in 2002 and 2006:
- Writing is a process of thinking, drafting and reworking
- Conventions of writing are required for effective communication
- Writing is enriched by personal experience, knowledge and insights
The Framework also identifies the specific skills required by the task:
- Planning
- Composing
- Editing
The purpose of this probe study was to re-analyse a sample of the 1998 NEMP ‘My Place’ Writing Assessment data to examine students’ ability to plan, compose and edit their writing. What evidence was there of student ability to implement these specific writing skills? How did the results differ between year 4 students and year 8 students? Was there evidence of gender differences in the use of these skills? Were different skills used by different ability groupings at each level?
The 1998 NEMP analysis was on the content of work – the vividness of language, relevance to the topic, clarity and detail, and personal feeling. Editing was considered only to the extension, insertion, re-ordering and exclusion of content. Proofreading was limited to punctuation and the use of paragraphs.
The ‘English in the New Zealand Curriculum’ highlights the importance of developing explicit knowledge of planning and editing steps involved in writing:
- In writing, they (the students) should develop an explicit knowledge of the steps in the writing process, such as forming intentions (planning), composing, drafting, correcting and publishing. They should learn to understand and use accurately the conventions of written language, especially in formal contexts, and to write confidently, clearly and appropriately, in a range of styles and for a variety of purposes. (Ministry of Education, 1994, p.33)
The author of this report believed that the data available from the 1998 Writing Assessment offered the opportunity to further analyse children’s writing, particularly their ability to plan, write, and edit their work.