School Improvement in Maryland
What do the assessments test? English

Reading, Reviewing & Responding to Texts | Composing in a Variety of Modes | Controlling Language | Evaluating Content, Organization, & Language Use of Texts |

 
The High School Assessments student's knowledge of Core Learning Goals at the indicator level. Some indicators have assessment limits which indicate more specifically what will be assessed. Assessment items and other instructional resources at the indicator level can be viewed in the CLG Toolkit.

Goal 4 Evaluating the Content, Organization, and Language Use of Texts

The student will demonstrate the ability to evaluate the content, organization, and language use of texts.

Expectation

4.1 The student will describe the effect that a given text, heard or read, has on a listener or reader.

Indicators

4.1.1 The student will state and explain a personal response to a given text.

Assessment limits:
  • Explaining the effectiveness of text(s) in accomplishing a purpose
  • Explaining connections within or between texts
  • Selecting and explaining appropriate textual evidence that supports a personal response
    • specific words and phrases
    • details
    • scenes
    • images
    • symbols
Expectation

4.2 The student will assess the effectiveness of choice of details, organizational pattern, word choice, syntax, use of figurative language, and rhetorical devices.

Indicators

4.2.1 The student will assess the effectiveness of diction that reveals an author's purpose.

Assessment limits:
  • Evaluating author's choice of words, phrases, sentences, and word order
    • for a particular audience or effect
    • for a given purpose
    • to extend meaning in a context
    • to provide emphasis

4.2.2 The student will explain how the specific language and expression used by the writer or speaker affects reader or listener response.

4.2.3 The student will evaluate the use of transitions and their effectiveness in a text.

4.2.4 The student will explain how repetitions of words, phrases, structural features, and ideas affect the meaning and/or tone of a text.

Expectation

4.3 The student will evaluate textual changes in a work and explain how these changes alter tone, clarify meaning, address a particular audience, or fulfill a purpose.

Indicators

4.3.1 The student will alter the tone of a text by revising its diction.

Assessment limits:
  • Selecting appropriate revisions of words and phrases
    • tone (e.g., humorous, urgent, official, authoritative, more or less critical, commanding, diplomatic, detached, resentful, sympathetic, formal, informal)
    • purpose (inform, persuade, express personal ideas)
    • audience (e.g., peer, adult, child, official authority)

4.3.2 The student will justify revisions in syntax and diction from a previous draft of a text by explaining how the change affects meaning.

4.3.3 The student will alter a text to present the same content to a different audience via the same or different media.

4.3.4 The student will compare the differences in effect of two texts on a given subject.

Date: 8/2004