11ENG-How to: Unfamiliar texts assessment

How To Get E8 (High Excellence) in Unfamiliar Texts Writing

In order to get a High Excellence, the student who is getting assessed must:
-Identify certain aspects within the text that reinforce and provide concrete evidence to back up the thesis of the text.
-Add in a personal voice, to strengthen your ideas and examples submitted in the answers.
-Talk about the effect, and not simply about, the language features
-Add in the authors' purpose

The differences between Achieved, Merit and Excellence

In order to get achieved, the student must show some basic understanding of the text provided, and follow the directions carefully. Also, the student must quote or identify certain aspects that are important in the text as a whole. To make the step up to Merit, the student must draw conclusions based off of the test, and develop each answer thoroughly and logically, as well as follow the steps above. In order to reach the highest step of an Excellence, the student must add in personal input, and link some examples/aspects to the outer world (apart from the text).

Let's be honest here, it does not seem too hard to get achieved in this assessment if you put in the right amount of time and effort, however, the difficulty steps up the higher you aim for. To really aim for a grade, you should aim for the grade above (e.g if you want to get a merit, aim for excellence etc). To aim for excellence, aim for high excellence (e.g. add in extra info that would support your ideas).

In summary, short answers tend to aim towards an Achieved, whereas longer answers that are more in depth tend to aim towards an Excellence. The NZQA provides a whole page per answer, which is enough to begin an answer then cross it out if it was a mistake. It is recommended to fill up the page in order to aim for a high score, as the more that is inputted, the more likely it is for you to receive excellence or somewhere thereabouts.