School Assessment: Building and Presenting Your Internal Folio
What school assessment rewards
Internal assessment in Stage 2 Armenian is designed to test whether you can use Armenian purposefully across different modes, not whether you can recite rules. Expect tasks built around the three strands: listening and responding, reading and responding, and spoken and written production. Your teachers will assess you against performance standards describing knowledge and understanding and application, so the quality of your ideas and the accuracy of your grammar matter equally.
Concepts you must control
- Text types: letter, email, diary entry, article, report, speech, dialogue, blog post. Each has conventions (salutation, register, structure) that examiners notice.
- Register and address: formal դուք versus informal դու, and the corresponding verb endings. Mixing them is a common error.
- Cohesion: conjunctions (որովհետև, սակայն, բացի այդ), pronoun reference, and paragraphing.
- Tense and aspect: present, past imperfect, past perfect, future, and the use of the subjunctive after modal expressions.
- Vocabulary range: topic-specific lexis for family, school, environment, technology, migration, cultural identity.
Traps to watch
- Answering the prompt only partly. If the task asks for a description and an opinion, both must appear.
- Over-reliance on memorised phrases that do not fit the register or the topic.
- Ignoring word limits - too short signals insufficient development; excessive length often brings more errors.
- Literal translation from English producing unnatural word order; Armenian typically places the verb later and uses postpositions.
- Missing the audience. A letter to a newspaper editor and a text to a friend demand different openings.
Rule of thumb
Before writing, spend two minutes planning: identify the text type, audience, purpose, and three content points. Then check each paragraph against that plan. One clear idea, correctly expressed, scores better than three half-formed ones.
Worked example
Task: write an email to a host family thanking them and describing your first week at school. Plan: greeting (formal Ձեզ), thanks, two school details, one difficulty, closing. Draft each section in short sentences, then join with connectors such as Բացի այդ and Չնայած դրան.
Preparing your folio
Keep all drafts. Teachers value evidence of redrafting, and reflecting on your own errors is itself assessed learning.