Language Conventions, Reading and Writing Explained for Teachers and Parents

Three of the four NAPLAN papers are literacy papers: reading, writing, and conventions of language. Together they take rather more of a student's test week than numeracy does, and between them they assess something broader than "English" — the machinery of written language, and whether a student can both operate it and see it being operated on them.

This is the third post in our series on NAPLAN-style practice. Here we take each of the three literacy papers in turn — what it assesses, how it changes between Year 3 and Year 9, and what actually helps.

In short

• Reading asks three kinds of question: what the text says, what it implies, and why the writer made a choice. The balance shifts from the first towards the third as year levels rise.
• Writing is one task in forty minutes, from a narrative or persuasive prompt, marked against ten assessment criteria — not a single mark.
• Conventions of language is spelling, grammar and punctuation in short, fast questions. Australian spelling throughout.
• The three are connected. Conventions marks appear inside the writing criteria too, so a student weak on punctuation loses in two papers, not one.
• Reading widely is necessary but not sufficient — the evaluative questions are a distinct skill that has to be taught and practised.

Reading

A student reads a series of original passages — a story, an article, an argument — and answers questions on each. Passages are written to the year level and set in places an Australian student recognises, and every question is answerable from the text in front of them. Nothing depends on having met the topic at home, which matters more than it sounds: a comprehension question that quietly rewards background knowledge is testing a student's household, not their reading.

The questions work at three levels:

• Locating — finding something the text states outright.
• Inferring — working out something it implies but does not say.
• Evaluating — judging why the writer made a particular choice, and what it was meant to do to the reader.

The proportions shift substantially across the years. A Year 3 paper leans on locating detail and simple inference. A Year 9 paper asks far more often what the writer was trying to do to you — weighing evidence, detecting bias, synthesising across sources.

That third category is the one most often left to look after itself. Wide reading builds vocabulary and fluency, and it helps enormously with the first two levels. It does not reliably teach a student to notice that a writer chose "claimed" rather than "said". That noticing is a taught skill, and it is worth explicit attention from around Year 5.

Litzi's reading papers run 30 questions in 45 minutes at Year 3, rising to 38 questions in 65 minutes by Years 7 and 9. Passages sit alongside the questions rather than on a separate screen, and the text-size control grows the passage and the question together.

Writing

One task, forty minutes. The student is given either a narrative prompt — a starting point to build a story from — or a persuasive one, a proposition with two defensible sides that they have to argue. A short planning scaffold sits above the writing space and a live word count runs beside it. Everything saves as they type.

It is then marked against the ten assessment criteria, from audience and text structure through to paragraphing, punctuation and spelling, with a comment on each rather than a single number. This is the part parents most often find surprising: a piece of writing can be imaginative and still score modestly, because ideas are one criterion among ten.

Spelling and sentence structure carry marks here, so in Litzi's writing paper the browser's own spellchecker and autocorrect are switched off for that box. The point is to see what a student can do unaided — a piece silently corrected by a browser tells a teacher nothing about what to teach next.

The expectations rise steadily rather than changing shape. Year 3 and Year 5 sit the same ten criteria, with more expected of paragraphing, vocabulary and sentence variety at Year 5. By Year 7 the task calls for a sustained argument or narrative, with cohesion and control of language carrying more weight. Year 9 asks for a developed position, judged on precision of language as much as on ideas.

What helps with writing

Planning, mostly. Forty minutes is not long, and the single most common pattern in weak scripts is a strong opening followed by a collapse in structure — a student who started writing before deciding where they were going. Two or three minutes spent on the scaffold is almost always repaid.

The second is reading the criteria. A student who knows that paragraphing is separately assessed will paragraph. It is not gaming the test; it is knowing what good writing is understood to include.

Conventions of language

Spelling, grammar and punctuation, in short questions that come quickly. This is the paper where a student's instinct for how written English works either holds up or doesn't, and it is the most improvable of the three by a distance.

The question formats are consistent, which is useful for practice. A spelling question shows a sentence with one word underlined and asks for it correctly spelt. A grammar or punctuation question usually offers four versions of a sentence where only one is right.

The ground it covers widens considerably between Year 3 and Year 9:

• Year 3 — spelling, capital letters and end punctuation, common homophones, simple sentence structure. Litzi's paper is 40 questions in 45 minutes.
• Year 5 — apostrophes, commas, tense and agreement, prefixes and suffixes, harder homophones. 45 questions in 45 minutes.
• Year 7 — clause analysis, punctuation within sentences, modality, and etymological spelling patterns. 50 questions in 45 minutes.
• Year 9 — sophisticated punctuation and sentence control, nuance and register, Greek and Latin roots. 50 questions in 45 minutes.

Australian spelling throughout: colour, centre, organise, and practise as the verb. This is worth checking in any practice material you use, because a great deal of what is available online is written to American conventions and will teach a student the wrong answer with complete confidence.

The three papers are not independent

It is tempting to treat conventions as the least important of the three — it is the most mechanical, and it looks the least like real reading or real writing. That gets the arithmetic backwards.

Punctuation, spelling and sentence structure are separately assessed inside the writing criteria. A student who is shaky on apostrophes and comma splices loses marks in conventions and again in writing. Conversely, targeted work on conventions is one of the few interventions that shows up in two papers at once — and because the question formats are so consistent, it responds quickly to practice.

How to practise the literacy papers

Sit full papers, more than once. Reading stamina is real: a Year 9 student managing 38 questions across dense passages in 65 minutes is doing something a worksheet does not rehearse. Every Litzi paper is assembled from a large question bank at the moment a student sits down, with questions from their recent sittings held back, so a second sitting is a new paper and the change in score means something.

Read the sub-skill breakdown. Results sort weakest first, so a reading result becomes "inference is solid, author's purpose is not" rather than a number. In conventions the breakdown is especially useful, because weaknesses there are usually narrow and specific — apostrophes, or tense agreement — and narrow weaknesses are fixable in a week.

Work through the wrong answers. Every question comes with a worked solution written to the student, and an explanation of why the tempting wrong answer was tempting. In a four-option grammar question the distractors are chosen to represent particular misunderstandings, so knowing why an option appealed is most of the lesson.

For teachers running this with a class

Every student's paper is drawn independently, so thirty students sitting "the same" practice test are sitting thirty different papers. Nothing circulates, and there is no answer key to find because there is no fixed paper to have a key for.

Class results aggregate by sub-skill, which in conventions tends to produce an unusually clear picture — a cohort's apostrophe problem shows up immediately and can be addressed in a single lesson.

Questions teachers and parents ask

What is the conventions of language paper?

It assesses spelling, grammar and punctuation through short questions. Spelling questions present a sentence with one word underlined to be corrected; grammar and punctuation questions typically offer four versions of a sentence, only one of which is right.

Is NAPLAN writing marked as a single score?

No. Writing is assessed against ten criteria, covering audience, text structure, ideas, vocabulary, cohesion, paragraphing, sentence structure, punctuation and spelling. Litzi returns a comment on each rather than one overall number.

Does my child get a spellchecker in the writing task?

No. Spelling and sentence structure carry marks, so the browser's spellchecker and autocorrect are switched off for the writing box. The purpose is to see what a student can do unaided.

Is Australian or American spelling used?

Australian spelling throughout — colour, centre, organise, and practise as the verb.

Will reading widely be enough to prepare for the reading paper?

It helps a great deal with locating information and inference, but the evaluative questions — why a writer made a particular choice — are a distinct skill that benefits from explicit teaching and practice.

Which literacy paper improves fastest with practice?

Conventions of language, generally. Its question formats are consistent and its weaknesses tend to be narrow and specific, so targeted work shows results quickly — and because punctuation and spelling are also assessed within the writing criteria, that work counts twice.

NAPLAN is a registered trademark of the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA). Litzi is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to ACARA, and does not reproduce any real NAPLAN question, passage or specification. Question counts and durations given above are those of Litzi's own practice papers. Litzi provides original practice tests written in the style of NAPLAN.