There’s a secret to scoring top marks in NAPLAN writing. And it’s easily missed by students

When students sit their NAPLAN writing test every year, the biggest marks are for spelling, sentence structure and how well a student crafts a piece for an intended audience.

The marking criteria also state students get rewarded for using a vocabulary of “challenging” words. For example, camouflage, changeable and colloquial are better than common, carry or cup.

But researchers who did a close analysis of a small sample of top-scoring NAPLAN narrative writing scripts discovered that a key feature of top-scoring students was the use of figurative language, such as similes, metaphors and hyperbole.

“It is therefore concerning that the NAPLAN narrative writing marking guide downplays the importance of figurative language,” the University of Queensland education academics said in the paper published last year.

Lead researcher Dr Damon Thomas said a quarter of the high-scoring year 3 students’ words they analysed from the 2022 tests were figurative in some way, and rewarded by the markers who were engaged by their narratives.

“It’s not that spelling, sentence structure, and so on, aren’t important to teach for narratives, but we should ideally also make it clear to students how good storytellers use figurative devices like metaphor, alliteration, and hyperbole to make the beginnings, middles, and ends of their stories more engaging,” he said.

“Without a clearer mention of figurative language in the narrative marking guide, there’s a risk that this communicates to teachers (and by extension students) that it’s not as important for stories as it is for arguments, which simply isn’t the case.”

While the researchers said there was little mention of figurative language in the marking criteria for narrative writing, it is a key feature of the criteria for persuasive writing.

Asked about the discrepancy, an Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority spokesman said the use of figurative language was assessed in NAPLAN.

“[The] narrative and persuasive marking guides, which include robust evidence-based marking rubrics, have been developed and refined over time using thousands of students’ writing responses from years 3 to 9,” he said.

John Colet school in Belrose, a private primary school on the northern beaches, has recorded some of the best writing scores in the state for NAPLAN, but principal Julian Wilcock said teachers and students did not prepare for it.

Instead, their focus was on stretching students with its curriculum of Latin, Sanskrit and Shakespeare, exposing students to writing of great depth. Students are explicitly taught grammar.

“Our students do well in the writing because it is a byproduct of many different aspects about how we approach primary education,” Wilcock said.

According to the Australian Education Research Organisation, in 2022 students’ writing skills declined significantly in every key area except spelling over seven years to 2018.

Literacy researchers have previously criticised the NAPLAN writing test, saying it had damaged students’ skills, cornered teachers into promoting formulaic methods, and would soon be made redundant by artificial intelligence.

A major review of NAPLAN found it “impacts negatively on how writing is taught in the classroom”.

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