Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences Formative Writing Tasks and Online Portfolio

This assessment sees students develop fundamental writing skills through the production of genre specific written work and through critical self-reflection on their writing process. For the creative piece, students are free to choose a theme or topic of personal interest, provided it is appropriate for the target audience and/or the stylistic conventions of the genre. Importantly, students are not marked on this creative output but rather their critical reflection related to this. Students are marked on their critical thinking and written proficiency rather than their creative capabilities. Students are assessed on their ability to reflect critically upon their writing process, organise their reflections into a coherent, logical, and developmental structure, construct paragraphs that support and promote this logical development, and write effective, engaging, and persuasive prose that gives an insight into their personal approach to (or difficulties with) writing. In the case of WRIT1005, this assessment was paired with a formative assessment in the form of a weekly journal in which students were required to develop an awareness of their own writing process. In WRIT Students were also given the option to illustrate their stories, thus providing further opportunities for create expression and the potential to cater to diverse student interests. The most successful stories were further developed and exhibited in contexts beyond the classroom.