NAPLAN Evaluation Domains 3 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: In NAPLAN Writing, the 'cohesion' criterion evaluates:
- The number of sentences per paragraph
- The use of linking devices and pronoun references that connect ideas across the text (Correct answer)
- The accuracy of punctuation marks
- The range of adjectives used
Correct answer: The use of linking devices and pronoun references that connect ideas across the text
Cohesion looks at how well connective words, pronouns, and references tie the text together smoothly.
Question 2: A Year 9 student's NAPLAN Reading task includes an advertisement, a poem, and a newspaper article. This variety reflects which key design feature of the Reading domain?
- Testing only literary texts
- Assessing comprehension across multiple text types (Correct answer)
- Focusing exclusively on informational texts
- Measuring only literal retrieval of facts
Correct answer: Assessing comprehension across multiple text types
NAPLAN Reading deliberately includes a range of text types to assess comprehension across different genres and purposes.
Question 3: Which NAPLAN Numeracy item type would most directly assess a student's ability to interpret a bar graph?
- A question on adding fractions
- A question asking students to read values and draw conclusions from a graph (Correct answer)
- A question on calculating area
- A question on solving an algebraic equation
Correct answer: A question asking students to read values and draw conclusions from a graph
Reading and interpreting graphs falls under the Statistics and Probability strand within NAPLAN Numeracy.
Question 4: NAPLAN Language Conventions word knowledge items differ from Reading items primarily because they:
- Require students to write extended responses
- Focus on identifying correct word choice, grammar, and spelling in isolation rather than full text comprehension (Correct answer)
- Only appear in Year 3 tests
- Are worth more marks than Reading items
Correct answer: Focus on identifying correct word choice, grammar, and spelling in isolation rather than full text comprehension
Language Conventions tests discrete language skills in sentence-level contexts, while Reading requires comprehension of full texts.
Question 5: In NAPLAN Writing assessment, 'sentence structure' is marked as a separate criterion from 'punctuation' because:
- Punctuation is not important in narrative writing
- Sentence structure evaluates grammatical construction while punctuation evaluates the marks used to signal structure (Correct answer)
- Sentence structure only applies to persuasive texts
- Both criteria assess the same skill from different perspectives
Correct answer: Sentence structure evaluates grammatical construction while punctuation evaluates the marks used to signal structure
Sentence structure marks how grammatically correct and varied sentences are, while punctuation marks how effectively marks are used within those sentences.
Question 6: Which of the following best describes a 'higher-order' Reading comprehension question on NAPLAN?
- Find and copy the name of the main character
- Identify the synonym of a bolded word
- Evaluate the author's purpose and explain how language choices support it (Correct answer)
- Locate the date mentioned in the first paragraph
Correct answer: Evaluate the author's purpose and explain how language choices support it
Higher-order questions require inference, evaluation, and critical analysis rather than simple information retrieval.
Question 7: NAPLAN measures student achievement against national proficiency standards rather than against other students. This means NAPLAN results are best described as:
- Norm-referenced
- Criterion-referenced (Correct answer)
- Competency-ranked
- Percentile-scored
Correct answer: Criterion-referenced
NAPLAN uses criterion-referenced assessment, comparing students' performance to defined proficiency standards, not to each other.
NAPLAN Evaluation Domains 3
In NAPLAN Writing, the 'cohesion' criterion evaluates: