The development of our new Text Type writing skills development series has inspired the creation of several new assessment tasks.
Context & purpose: You have been exchanging emails and messages with your Japanese friend Yumiko and have been researching online in preparation for your visit to Japan.
Online Friends is a listening, reading and writing task that could be used as a regular assessment task or in lieu of a preliminary exam for cohorts who are not quite ready for the full HSC style experience. It aims to develop skills in answering HSC style questions though by repeating questions in different contexts. For example, the listening section has three “What is the purpose of this announcement?” questions in a row to focus students on the type of questions used in formal exams. There are 8 listening texts in this section.
The reading section focuses on the use of plain form in casual emails and texts although this could be edited to be polite if the teacher chooses to do so. The final writing task continues the theme and teachers could allow students to write draft versions prior to the exam to reduce anxiety levels for students the first time through.
This task is designed around language and structures mainly introduced in Jblog 4 Express Chapters 3-4 such as school and home life. Students can prepare for this task through exposure to the Course 2 Casual Emails and Letters resource. The tasks are stand-alone tasks though and teachers can prepare students for the task via other class activities and resources that focus on describing school camps and excursions, eliciting invitations for simple plans on the weekend or after the HSC, and interpreting purpose and intention in texts.
Why do I need this?
You know your own students and are the best person to develop a task that differentiates for the needs of this year’s cohort. All Manten Resources are provided in word and pdf so you can edit the task to suit your preferences, changing vocabulary or the question as you prefer. It is much easier though to rework an existing task then to start with a blank page, so these resources hopefully give you back more of your weekends. For others who love to create from scratch, they might just give you the inspiration for a new direction to take with your own task. For teachers who run a regular full preliminary exam, this resource may just provide you with additional questions you could swap into your formal exam if you want to personalize your exam or avoid a text that does not match your teaching sequence.
How do I order this?
You can simply email jblog1help@gmail.com to request a quote or tax invoice for this item. We are always happy to answer questions about the task.
