Choosing the Right Internal Assessment Task Type
A school is designing its internal assessment program for SACE Stage 2 Italian (beginners). The coordinator proposes three tasks: (1) a written response to a holiday brochure, (2) a listening comprehension of a weather forecast, and (3) an oral presentation about the student's family. A teacher objects that the listening task is 'too easy' because students can guess from cognates, and suggests replacing it with a grammar test on passato prossimo. The coordinator also worries that all three tasks assess only receptive skills and that the program may not meet the requirement for students to produce language in more than one mode. The school has 18 students and one teacher, and moderation samples are due in Week 8.
1. Evaluate the coordinator's three proposed tasks against the goal of assessing multiple modes of communication.
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Task 1 (written response to a brochure) assesses reading comprehension plus written production, so it covers two modes in one task.
Task 2 (listening to a weather forecast) assesses listening comprehension only, a receptive mode. The teacher's objection that cognates make it guessable is a validity concern, not a reason to abandon listening; the fix is to design items that require inference (for example, deciding whether an outing should be cancelled) rather than literal word-matching.
Task 3 (oral presentation on family) assesses spoken production, but a monologue does not assess interaction.
Overall the set covers reading, writing, listening, and speaking, but interaction is missing and the listening task needs stronger items. The program is closer to compliance than the coordinator fears, provided the listening task is revised and an interactive oral element is added.
2. The teacher proposes replacing the listening task with a grammar test on passato prossimo. Assess this proposal.
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A standalone grammar test is a poor fit for a communicative internal assessment. It measures knowledge about language rather than the ability to use language to exchange meaning, and it would narrow the program's mode coverage by removing the only listening task. Grammar accuracy should be assessed within productive and receptive tasks (for example, through the accuracy criterion in a written response), not as an isolated exercise.
The proposal also creates a validity problem: a student who can conjugate passato prossimo correctly may still fail to understand a spoken weather forecast. Replacing a communicative task with a discrete-point test would make the program less representative of the skills the subject aims to develop.
A better compromise is to keep the listening task, strengthen its items to require inference, and address grammar through feedback and the accuracy dimension of existing tasks.
3. Given 18 students, one teacher, and a Week 8 moderation deadline, outline a workable plan for completing and moderating the tasks.
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A workable plan: run the three tasks across Weeks 2 to 6, with the written response in class (one lesson), the listening task in a single session, and oral presentations spread over two lessons so 18 students can each be heard (about nine per lesson). Score each task against the rubric immediately after collection while evidence is fresh, and keep annotated samples.
For moderation, select a stratified sample of about five or six students spanning high, middle, and low achievement, and include any borderline cases. The teacher should prepare the sample pack (task sheets, rubrics, annotated student work) by Week 7, leaving Week 8 for the moderation meeting and any score adjustments.
The main constraint is oral assessment time: with one teacher, 18 presentations must be scheduled carefully, and a second staff member should be present or recordings kept to support later moderation.