campusreview . com . au policy & reform confidence in teaching aspects of grammar declined between years 3-6 and years 7-10 . Additionally , there was a further decline in confidence in teaching grammar between years 7-10 and years 11-12 .
HIGH-STAKES HSC ENGLISH EXAMS During her time as NSW ’ s chief examiner in HSC English , Dutton and her colleagues did not witness evidence that there was a trend of writing decline in the senior years .
“ Happily , I can report we saw no evidence that HSC English writing standards were dipping across time . I ’ m not able to comment on writing standards in other HSC subjects ,” she says .
“ Analysis of performance bands year on year show small fluctuations but no pattern of decline . Certainly , in the case of NSW HSC English , students are writing complex , carefully framed responses to questions on their prescribed and unseen texts .
“ They ’ re managing complexity in textual forms , crafting creative , analytical and reflexive responses and doing so in a high stakes , timed , single draft examination . I ’ m confident markers would agree that the majority of students are doing remarkable things in this high-stakes examination .
“ Naturally HSC students demonstrate a range of abilities in writing , but changes to school leaving ages and arrangements mean we currently have students in the later years of secondary schools who two decades ago would have left school to pursue employment or vocational training .
“ Teachers do a great job in all subject areas at continuing to develop these students ’ writing skills and supporting them to develop the writing literacies they will need when they transition into their lives beyond school .”
WRITING ON THE ‘ HIGHWIRE ’ Research has also shown that a large degree of writing tasks taking place in Australian secondary classrooms can be described as “ writing on the highwire ”.
“ I use the highwire metaphor to describe the fact that teachers and students in Australian schools are working in a high stakes test regime characterised by NAPLAN tests of writing in Year 3 , 5 , 7 and 9 and , then , in NSW and a range of other jurisdictions , an end of school high stakes examination ,” Dutton says .
“ It is a high wire act because both teacher and student performance are being measured and there are risks associated with falling off the wire .”
According to the Macquarie University lecturer , these highstakes contexts ( which have been mirrored in the UK , for example ), encourage teaching to test and “ eschewing the writing practices which we know lead to stronger writing outcomes for students ”.
The result , then , is predictable : students are afforded less time and far fewer opportunities to experiment , take risks and “ undertake the often non-linear journey ” in becoming skilled , confident writers . In this kind of high-stakes , formulaic environment , too few students are given opportunities to write an array of different text types ( including authentic texts ) for a range of audiences . Instead they are writing texts for a teacher audience – in preparation for the high stakes examiner audience .
Has there been an overemphasis on reading ? Dutton believes that the teaching of reading is a highly contested area , which is not helped by the “ oversimplification of the issues by
It is a high wire act because both teacher and student performance are being measured and there are risks associated with falling off .
media and politicians and by the constant pitching of ‘ silver bullet ’ solutions by the loud voices of those with commercial interests in the space ”. However , in relation to whether the teaching of reading has taken away valuable time from teaching writing , she is unconvinced .
“ Anecdotally there are many teachers who feel the teaching of reading is dominating in the primary years , but from my knowledge of secondary classrooms I don ’ t think we can argue that the teaching of reading is overemphasised in the middle years of secondary .
“ Reading and writing are inextricable , and it is not helpful to set up a binary construct where we weigh up the either reading or writing proposition .
“ Reading and writing are interconnected in so many ways and what skilful teachers do is gather evidence on the learning needs of their students and address these distinctive learning needs . They do this rather than reaching for a one size fits all solution to the teaching of reading and writing .”
However , Dutton also refers to the importance of “ sustained writing in the classroom and across subject areas in the middle years ”, as evidenced in The Australian Writing Survey .
So , how can we reconcile these different opinions of writings standards between school and university ?
What might produce this ‘ disconnect ’ or ‘ writing leap ’ between university and high school can be found in one of the reports to which Dutton refers . Perelman ’ s 2018 Towards a New NAPLAN : Testing to the Teaching report , which was prepared for the NSW Teacher ’ s Federation , compared the NAPLAN test with six other international tests , including from the US , Australia , Canada and the UK .
One of Perelman ’ s key findings was “ that there is too much emphasis on spelling , punctuation , paragraphing and grammar at the expense of higher order writing issues ” in such tests .
This is telling , for universities are places where rules and conventions matter . The misuse of a semi-colon instead of a colon has an impact , as do grammatically incorrect sentences . Mistakes such as these equate to mark-downs in the ‘ expression ’ or ‘ writing mechanics ’ parts of a marking rubric .
Referencing , too , becomes more complicated and rule-bound , and again can jeopardise a mark substantially if done incorrectly . These conventions , however , should not be seen as problematic for our school leavers : they are invariably covered in introductory academic writing courses at universities .
So , besides a decline in a dubious test such as NAPLAN , is there a systemic writing problem among Australia ’ s youth ? The evidence doesn ’ t seem to support it .
The school years prepare students with a multitude of highly sophisticated writing skills that equip them well for the next part of their writing journey .
Becoming overly concerned with a misplaced apostrophe or a comma splice will only give teachers , not students , a headache . ■
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