Lessons learned from the 2015 Assessor's Report - English

[literally lauren]

Following the age old tradition I started last year, I thought I might draw your attention (~you being the Class of 2016 in particular~) to the Assessor’s Report for English in 2015. In general, a lot of this document is pure jargonistic fluff written in generic teacher code that is tiresome to even comprehend let alone use to direct your study.

However, there are a few key points – some of which are brought up consistently year after year, and others that are unique to certain cohorts (eg. see last year’s “too many students are relying exclusively on commercially produced material” gripe) – which can be of some benefit for those wondering what the assessors want to see.

And there may even be a few surprises in terms of what the assessors don't want to see, so it's worth reading just to find these helpful tidbits.

But reading the whole thing can be a tad arduous, and it can be difficult to extract the delightful tips from the mucky generalisations and dull descriptions of the task.

That's what this document is here for! I've annotated this both by maximising and minimising (/grey-ing out) important and unimportant information respectively, and I've also added a heap of comments based on the points they raise in order to clarify and develop what they're trying to communicate. I've also highlighted some of the repeated issues that the assessors have flagged as being endemic to Sections A and B in particular.

Keep in mind that these reports aim to comment on the bulk of the state, but there will always be outliers, so this is by no means a conclusive list of all the problems you might face, but hopefully it will give you some idea of the assessor's priorities and what you can do to appease them when they're marking your work.