ELLP Years1-4 - ESOL - Literacy Online - Te Kete Ipurangi

Judgments about what
stage a learner is at can
never be “absolutely
accurate”; they can only
indicate the “best fit” for
that learner.
Best fit
Assigning a text to a stage is complex and requires careful judgment and a “best fit”
approach, based on a range of criteria. A learner’s written text may have some features
that seem to fit into a lower stage and some that seem to fit into a higher stage.
The decisions that a teacher makes about where a learner’s text fits are generalisations,
but they should always be informed by the teacher’s knowledge about language. Teachers
need to make their judgments on the basis of an analysis of the text at whole-text,
sentence, and word levels, taking into account both deeper and surface features.
Information about supporting writing development can be found in Effective Literacy
Practice in Years 1 to 4, Supporting English Language Learning in Primary Schools
(forthcoming), The New Zealand Curriculum Exemplars: English (Written Language),
asTTle: Assessment Tools for Teaching and Learning, 5 and ESOL Online.
There are many different ways of describing progress in writing. The following very
broad matrix is generalised to all types of text. It gives an overview of important aspects
of English language learners’ writing progress rather than identifying every aspect in
detail. Teachers also need to be aware that a learner’s writing will always be affected by
the context of the writing task and by the prior knowledge and skills the learner brings
to it.
Specific indicators for different text types can be identified, for example, in the asTTle
Writing Progress Indicators.
This matrix focuses mainly on how writers within each broad stage of development
typically organise and develop a text. It indicates the ways that a learner’s writing
develops, as they move through the Foundation Stage, Stage 1, and Stage 2, in terms of
their use of structures (at whole-text, paragraph, sentence, and phrase levels) and word
forms in their texts. Appropriateness (in terms of purpose and audience) of content,
vocabulary, and stylistic choices are also important indicators of progress.
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It is not generally suitable to use asTTle for English language learners who are in years 1–4 and are in the
early stages of learning English, because asTTle levels relate to curriculum levels for native speakers
of English.