How does one get a study score of 50 in English/EAL?

[Sarinamfgh]

I'm just curious as to how the essays of people who get 50 are ranked against other people's.
What criteria do examiners follow?
Is it dependent on the average exam mark of the cohort? (if yes, what average mark is expected of the cohort?)
Is it dependent on the score of the GAT? (if yes, what should be the average GAT mark of the cohort?)

* I do understand that it is difficult (or even impossible) to answer these questions, I would just like to know about your experiences with people getting 50s

[literally lauren]

I'm just curious as to how the essays of people who get 50 are ranked against other people's.

Numerically, the people who get 50s have to score 9s and 10s (mostly 10s) on the exam, and being rank 1 helps a lot. But it's not like there's any hidden qualities in an essay written by someone with a 50 SS that aren't present in other pieces - it's just that those high-range essays do lots of different things well.

Consider:
Essay from Student 1: good use of evidence, and a strong contention, but the expression and grammar compromise clarity in some sections --> 8/10
Essay from Student 2: ideas are awesome, but only tangentially relevant to the prompt --> 6/10
Essay from Student 3: ideas are fairly simplistic, but well argued, and the expression is decent --> 7.5/10
Essay from Student 4: contention is relevant, ideas are well-supported and well-expressed, and the piece is very cohesive --> 10/10

Every one of these essays was doing at least one thing right; it's just that the 10/10 was able to combine a whole bunch of right things together.
 

What criteria do examiners follow?

Is it dependent on the average exam mark of the cohort? (if yes, what average mark is expected of the cohort?)

Sort of. Explanation here. But I'm not sure what you mean by 'expected mark.' The average in the exam is around 5/10, but the average in your cohort (ie. the marks you get for SACs) will vary between schools.

Is it dependent on the score of the GAT? (if yes, what should be the average GAT mark of the cohort?)

Nope, not to my knowledge. Not unless you don't attend your English exam for some reason, in which case you'll get a derived score based on your GAT, SAC performance, and indicative grade from your teacher. It's in your best interests to give the GAT your best shot but you shouldn't take it too seriously or stress out about it - the marks you get for those Written sections are by no means predictive of your English results.

[Sarinamfgh]

Thank you! It has helped a lot!

[Glasses]

I'm just curious as to how the essays of people who get 50 are ranked against other people's.
What criteria do examiners follow?
Is it dependent on the average exam mark of the cohort? (if yes, what average mark is expected of the cohort?)
Is it dependent on the score of the GAT? (if yes, what should be the average GAT mark of the cohort?)

* I do understand that it is difficult (or even impossible) to answer these questions, I would just like to know about your experiences with people getting 50s

I also just want to mention that (to my knowledge), the examiners don't actually mark each essay against a criteria like:
- Ideas = x amount of marks.
- Evidence = y amount of marks.
Etc.
I believe that the assessors read the essay, consider it against the criteria, and then give it a mark out of 10 based on what it seems.

So the process might go something like:
1. Read the essay.
2. They've done this (*criteria*) well, although this *criteria* is pretty average.
3. Seems like an x out of 10.

When I say this I don't mean that their marking is casual and/or that the examiners make assumptions - but (unlike many teachers for SACs [in my experience]), you don't get a certain score for each criteria point.

[Alter]

I wouldn't bother setting your heart out to getting a perfect 50 because in the grand scheme of things, it doesn't really matter. You'll stress yourself out more in the SACs trying to accomplish this and end up burdening yourself. It's even possible to get full marks on the exam but not get a 50 just because your rank isn't perfect.

[Sarinamfgh]

I'm not aiming for 50. I am trying to understand what is expected of me and how I am ranked against some one who gets 50.

[literally lauren]

Just to clarify, you're not really 'ranked against' particular scores or people.

In the exam, the assessors take out a random bunch of essays (~1% of the state would be my guess, though I'm not sure how they distribute the numbers for all the different Sec. A texts) for statistical moderation. Basically they create a bell curve out of those essays they selected, and from there, they create a checklist of criteria based on the official ones posted above.

This ensures that for years like 2011 where Section C was utterly atrocious, there won't just be a really low curve with the highest mark being 7/10. I'm quite sure that in that year, there would've been a lot of people scoring in the upper band who would've only been mid-band in other years simply because the material was so difficult that they had to give more credit to students who could still demonstrate their understanding in spite of that difficulty factor. But admittedly they've learnt from their mistakes and no exam since then has been so unmanageably tricky, and I'd argue a lot of the prompts have been significantly easier than they were in the 2010-2013 era.

Then, once they have a pile of essays that the assessor's inner circle deems low range/ mid-range/ upper range, they present those to all the other markers so that they know what a 2/10 vs. 6/10 vs. 10/10 etc. looks like for that cohort.

So it's not like they'll pick up your essay, match it with a 10/10 and pick out the similarities and differences. Everyone's marked on the same criteria and the expectations are the same across the board. And as Glasses noted, they'll just read through your piece and judge it holistically (ie. 'this demonstrates all the qualities of a 6/10 piece and nothing higher than that, ∴ it gets a 6/10' or 'this exhibits lots of qualities of a 7/10 piece, and some of a 9/10 piece ∴ it gets an 8/10') and so on.

[Sarinamfgh]

Oh well this makes more sense now.... Thank you everyone for answering this. Another questions that I have is that the average English GAT score of the cohort actually has an effect on the moderation. Is this true?

[literally lauren]

Never heard that before, and I highly doubt it. Even if that were true, it'd be statistically negligible compared to your actual English exam score + SAC ranking, and to my knowledge, the average GAT score for the Written Communication sections don't change drastically from year to year. I was always told that for the vast majority of the state, the GAT has very little impact whatsoever. Don't stress about it impacting your English score - just do your best without going overboard to prepare, and focus more so on improving your English skills