Level C1 Writing

The students' performance in these tasks suggest that they are working within the range of Level C1 in Writing. The assessing teacher will need to consider a range of student samples in order to determine whether each student is at the beginning of C1, consolidating C1 or at the C1 standard in Writing. 

At beginning Level C1 students:

• attempt to write down words they have heard or said, but this will usually not be with accurate spelling
• will rely heavily on proformas and other model texts as scaffolding to produce extended pieces of writing longer than a phrase or sentence with teacher guidance, but are not yet aware that different text types are used for different purposes
• tend to focus on producing a final product, rather than recognising that the act of writing is a process that involves planning, revision, and editing.

At consolidating Level C1 students:

• have begun to attempt their own sentences, although the focus is on meaning rather than grammatical accuracy
• produce sentences that tend to follow a basic subject–verb–object pattern, but with varying degrees of accuracy
• create texts that demonstrate a growing awareness of differences between text types, especially in terms of overall organisational features and structure, although their ability to demonstrate this in their own writing is still very rudimentary
• can review their writing and identify aspects that might be changed or revised, with assistance.

At Level C1 Achievement Standard students:

• write for a range of basic classroom and personal purposes, making lists and writing simple journal entries, notes, descriptions, recounts of events and instructional texts
• produce basic sentences and short texts based on well-practised spoken English and familiar contexts.
• write with varying grammatical accuracy, expressing themselves using familiar vocabulary and modelled structures and features
• order and sequence sentences about familiar topics into simple coherent texts, incorporating basic conventions such as headings and paragraphs
• correct some errors relating to targeted grammatical items, and rework drafts in response to teacher suggestions
• plan their texts and provide some additional information through visual texts, with support
• utilise a range of strategies for finding and spelling words, using spelling patterns and checking resources
• use basic features in software applications to write and present their texts.
  

Student information

This student is 17 years old. She is a Karen refugee and has been in Australia for approximately four months. She speaks Karen. She has been to a missionary school where she acquired a range of English vocabulary.

Task

This was a diagnostic creative writing task. Students had read the story of Ake and Paolina from 'True New Stories'. The student had the written story with her, but none of this writing came from that text. The rest come from her own ideas or recall of the story. The writing about dolphins came from her memory of the 'Free the Dolphins' text they had studied. The student did not actually fulfil the task requirements, as it was supposed to be written in the first person.

Text

Five years later Paolina has three children. She has one son and two daughter. Paulina’s son’s name is Gay Doh and two daughter are Dee bell Roe and Ku Moo Wah. This family is beautiful. Paolina is a good mother. They are go to America and visit her grand mother and grand father. Grand mother has is 76 years old and grand father is 80 years old. She likes sky blue coo colour and she doesn’t like red colours. They are go to the sea and watch the dolphins. Paolina children are like dolphins but Paolina doesn’t like dolphins and she likes zoo and R rose garden. Paolina’s children look dolphins jumping in the water. Gay Doh say dolphins are very nice. They watch dolphins in the sea, finish and they go to the zoo because Paolina like zoo. Paolina wants to see animals in the zoo. The see a lot of animals in the zoo. She likes animals in the zoo, are cats, dogs, deers, bears, snakes, birds. Paolina is a good teacher. Paolina’s children are students.

This sample of student work demonstrates that the student can:

• Write to communicate personal ideas (VCEALC591)
• Write short, simple texts for varied social purposes (VCEALC589)
• Use single-word subject–verb–object word order in simple sentences and noun–pronoun agreements with few errors (VCEALL600)
• Experiment with different tenses and use some common irregular past tense verbs correctly (VCEALL602)
• Use grapho-phonic knowledge to attempt to spell unknown words (VCEALL606)
• Use common punctuation with some consistency (VCEALL607)
• Use simple cohesive devices to structure writing (VCEALL599)
  

Possible next steps for this student's learning

• Writing an imaginative text from the first-person perspective (VCEALA592)
• Using past tense verbs (VCEALL602)
• Understanding the text structure of a narrative including orientation, complication and resolution (VCEALC589)
• Planning and drafting a story using a narrative text structure and linguistic features (VCEALC591)
• Understanding and using paragraphs in writing (VCEALL598)
  

Pathways and transitions considerations

A Year 10 student who is working within the range of Level C1 in any one language mode is not ready to transition to the English curriculum regardless of their proficiency in the other two language modes. This student will continue on Pathway C of the EAL curriculum.

Student information

This student is 13 years old and learning in an English language school. She is a Karen refugee and has been in Australia for approximately 8 months. She has had interrupted schooling in a refugee camp in Thailand.

Task

This is a 'thinking paper' written as part of a unit on quadrilaterals. Students worked in pairs with sets of shapes in different colours. The task was to think, pair, share and write. Students have previously learned have/has got. The class was working at a Year 3 to Year 4 conceptual level. The analysis is based on the student's writing before correction.

Text

1.       The pink shaPe is different. Because. have Long side and the yellow have got short side.

the Pink and the yellow have got the same short side but clalaur is different. 

3         the red have got two long and two short

the blue hove got two long and two short because they have got different clalaur

the orange have got two long side and two short side because calaur is different but the have the same

This sample of student work demonstrates that the student can:

• Use single-word subject–verb–object word order in simple sentences and noun–pronoun agreements with few errors (VCEALL600)
• Use single clauses, or use simple coordinating and subordinating conjunctions to combine clauses (VCEALL601)
• Incorporate introduced subject-specific vocabulary into simple sentences (VCEALL605)
• Use common punctuation with some consistency (VCEALL607)
  

Overall, this student can also: 

• Write short, simple texts for varied social purposes (VCEALC589)
• Show some organisation of subject matter and attempt the structure of a specified text (VCEALL597)
• Draw on experience of language patterns in controlled writing activities to express ideas (VCEALA596)
  

Student information

The student is 17 years old. She came from Iraq to Australia via Syria and speaks Arabic and Assyrian as her home languages. She has had age-equivalent schooling and literacy in Arabic before coming to Australia six months ago. 

Task 

Students brainstormed pirate words on the board. They were shown a set of pictures of different characters. Students chose one of the characters and wrote a first-person narrative independently. 

The analysis is based on the student’s writing before correction. 

Text 

I was a tiger priences. I had a lot of jewellerly and money. I lived with my parents in the Forec. There were a lot of tigres around me. But I wasn’t in love with any one of them. 

one day my father’s friend wanted to marry me. His name was Tigrow. My father was agree for that. But I wasn’t in love with him. So I decided to leave my family and injoyed to the group of pirates. I thought maybe I could find a Prince for me and that would be interested.

when I injoyed to the pirates that was really had. Becaus they were just stealing and killing people. Some times they kidnaped people and stole their ships or valuable. The captian of pirates was astrange lizard. Because he had Patch on his eye and there was pegied on his foot. there was a hook in his left hand and on his right hand was sword. The lizard was so evil to kill people. The importand things for him stole kill and kidnap people. No one could say No for him. They just did what he said. 

The pirates life was so interested for them. Because they could take everything they wanted and Nobody could say anything for them. But my work was just cooking food for them and cleaning. They were hitting me and other people to do the work for them and that really hard for me. 

one day I tryed to leave them but they caught me again and they said if I tryed that again they would kill me. That was so atrocion when you saw them killed people and stole them. So I wrote alitt for my family and Put it into the hottel and throught in the sea and I was prayig for my family could see the litter. 

After one week, my father and Tigrow came to help me and other people in the land. There was a big fight and lizard tryed to kill my father but Tigrow helped him. 

when the fight was finished Tigrow was vicitams. There were alot of people dead because in the fight were alot of cannon with Cannon ball. I cured all the vicitams and helped Tigrow to be okay. 

After that Tigrow decided to take the Pirates’s captian with him to his force. The new job for him was cleaner and chef. 

After two months I agree to marry Tigrow. But the surpris was he married another girl. I became alone again and all that happened like dream. started with injoyed to the Pirates and ends it to marry Tigrow another girl. 

This sample of student work demonstrates that the student can:

• Write short, simple texts for varied social purposes (VCEALC589)  
• Attempt paragraphs and topic sentences (VCEALL598)  
• Use simple cohesive devices to structure writing (VCEALL599)  
• Use single-word subject–verb–object word order in simple sentences and noun–pronoun agreements with few errors (VCEALL600)  
• Use single clauses, or use simple coordinating and subordinating conjunctions to combine clauses (VCEALL601) 
• Experiment with different tenses and use some common irregular past tense verbs correctly (VCEALL602)  
• Use basic qualifiers and quantifiers to express a range of meaning (VCEALL603) 
• Use grapho-phonic knowledge to attempt to spell unknown words (VCEALL606) 
• Use common punctuation with some consistency (VCEALL607) 

Possible next steps for this student's learning 

• Using a bilingual dictionary to check the spelling, meaning and home language translation of commonly misspelt English words to include in a personal word list (VCEALA595) (VCEALL604)
• Using capital letters at the beginning of sentences (VCEALL607) 
• Learning to use qualifiers to expand noun groups such as a prince who was interested in me (VCEALL603) 
• Learning about clauses and identifying run-on sentences that may be separated into different sentences (VCEALL600) (VCEALL601) 

Pathways and transitions considerations 

A student who is working within the range of Level C1 in any one language mode is not ready to transition to the English curriculum regardless of their proficiency in the other two language modes. This student will continue on Pathway C of the EAL curriculum.

Student information

The student is 15 years old and is in Year 9. He is from Thailand and speaks Thai as his home language. He has had age-equivalent schooling and can read and write in his home language. He learned English in Thailand. He is currently studying in an English language centre. 

Task

The student was asked to write a paragraph on the topic Should shops stop using plastic bags? 

The student was provided with heavily scaffolded paragraph plans that guided him through the structure of a paragraph, including a topic sentence, linking words, series of arguments and a concluding sentence. 

The student was not provided any other additional support. The analysis is based on the student’s writing before correction. 

Text

This sample of student work demonstrates that the student can:

• Show some organisation of subject matter and attempt the structure of a specified text (VCEALL597)
• Use single-word subject–verb–object word order in simple sentences and noun–pronoun agreements with few errors (VCEALL600)
• Use common punctuation with some consistency (VCEALL607)
• Use grapho-phonic knowledge to attempt to spell unknown words (VCEALL606) 
• Write to communicate personal ideas (VCEALC591)
• Use basic digital technology functions (VCEALL608) 

Possible next steps for this student's learning

• Discussing the plan with a teacher and a peer and incorporating corrections and suggestions (VCEALA594)
• Learning when and how to use negatives correctly (VCEALL602)
• Using a range of learnt sentence starters specifically for persuasive text such as In my opinion..., I believe... and It is important that... (VCEALA596)
• Using conjunctions such as because and so to join clauses and provide explanations and reasons (VCEALL601)
• Learning to incorporate persuasive language, including modal verbs such as should and must and modal adverbs such as definitely (VCEALL603)
• Exploring and using text formatting functions in word processing programs or apps to improve the presentation of final work (VCEALL608) 

Pathways and transitions considerations

A Year 9 student who is working within the range of Level C1 in any one language mode is not ready to transition to the English curriculum regardless of their proficiency in the other two language modes. This student will continue on Pathway C of the EAL curriculum.

Student information

The student is 12 years old and in Year 7. She is from China and speaks Mandarin as her home language. She has had age-equivalent schooling and can read and write in her home language. She has been studying in an English language school in Australia for two months. 

Task

This written task was completed towards the beginning of a unit of work on current issues. Students had read texts with arguments for and against banning mobile phones in schools.

The student typed her writing on the computer. The analysis is based on student’s work before correction. 

Text

I think students should bring mobile phone to school, because there are many benefits to us. First, if you can use mobile, you can make students interested in the class and encourage them to participate in discussions. It can also make the class more interesting. Second, the mobile phone can check some difficult knowledge points. Which can help students complete their work well when the teacher not present. Third mobile phones can make it easier to contact family members and prevent accidents. Therefore, I think schools not ban mobile phones. 

This sample of student work demonstrates that the student can: 

• Use the features of simple text types appropriately (VCEALA592) *uses persuasive language such as I think students should... 
• Use simple cohesive devices to structure writing (VCEALL599) 
• Use single-word subject–verb–object word order in simple sentences and noun–pronoun agreements with few errors (VCEALL600) 
• Use common punctuation with some consistency (VCEALL607) 

Overall, this student can also: 

• Show some organisation of subject matter and attempt the structure of a specified text (VCEALL597) 
• Use basic digital technology functions (VCEALL608) 

Possible next steps for this student's learning 

• Expanding on ideas with supporting evidence (VCEALL662) 
• Learning to combine clauses using a greater range of conjunctions (VCEALL665)
• Revising and practising using negation correctly, for example, Schools should not ban and The teacher is not present (VCEALL602) 

Pathways and transitions considerations 

A Year 7 student who is working within the range of Level C1 in any one language mode is not ready to transition to the English curriculum regardless of their proficiency in the other two language modes. This student will continue on Pathway C of the EAL curriculum.