Alaska High School Qualifying Exam: Writing

Essays and Paragraphs

Essay: write a coherent organized five paragraph essay about a familiar topic using complete sentences and proofreading for correct spelling, capitalization, and punctuation; use thesis paragraph, summary paragraph, transition devices, topic sentences in paragraphs, and supporting details.

Paragraph Coherence:  recognize sentences which do not belong a specific paragraph; develop coherent paragraphs which stick to a core subtopic and expand and develop the sub-topic.

Detail Support:  write or select sentences which logically support and develop the concept of the subtopic; i.e. details not only are on the same topic as the topic sentence or opinion statements, but expand and develop them.

Sequence: arrange sentences which provide supporting details and evidence within a paragraph in a logical sequence; identify a variety of paragraph development approaches and select the approach appropriate for a given paragraph.

Process Writing: write a clear coherent "how to" or process paragraph about a concrete operation or activity or process which the learner knows well.

Analysis: write a coherent well organized paragraph or essay which analyzes an abstract concept or provides reflective thought on a topic of personal interest to the learner; i.e. personal growth, career future, family history, relation of historical events to self; write a coherent essay about a topic from history, science, geography, or politics.

Topic Sentences:  identify topic sentence within a paragraph; select or write the best topic sentence for a given paragraph.

Types of Essays: write essays in a variety of rhetorical modes including process, personal narrative, historical or chronological, persuasive, analytic, comparison, contrast, and objective reports.

Grammar & Writing Conventions

Proofreading: accurately proofread his/her own writing for spelling, capitalization, punctuation, and grammatical correctness.

Handwriting:  use legible cursive handwriting.

Verbs: use correct verb forms with regard to tense consistency, mood, tense form, and plurality; apply knowledge of verb conjugation of both regular verbs and common irregular verbs.

Comparative Descriptors: correctly use and form comparative adjectives and adverb forms (high, higher, highest; splendid, more splendid, most splendid, etc.).

Capitalization: apply rules for capitalization of agencies, proper nouns and names, capitalization of beginning of sentences, lines of ppoetry, quotations, and in business and personal letter forms; avoid over capitalization.

Apposition: use commas to show apposition; avoid using appositive phrases to split adverb/adjective descriptors.

Comma Errors: avoid unnecessary use of commas; use commas to set off dependent clauses including those beginning with "but" and "and"  and those indicting temporal relations; use commas to separate items in a series.

Spelling:   proofread for common spelling errors including homophone pairs too/to, there/their, our/are.

Apostrophes: use apostrophes to show possession and contraction, and proofread for correct use of apostrophes;  apply rules for apostrophe placement in plural and singular nouns of possession.

Business Letter Format:   proofread format, capitalization, punctuation and phrasing of standard business letters including the salutation, address and closing; master the conventions of formal business English.

Semicolons:  use semicolons to set off independent clauses; apply rules for semi-colon use; use semi-colons correctly with coordinating conjunctions.

Colons:  use colons correctly in time notations and setting off lists or series of items.

Quotations:  use  correctly quotation marks and accompanying internal and end punctuation to present direct quotations.

Sentence Development

Sentence Sense: recognize  and correct sentences which do not make sense in English; apply sentence sense.

Sentence Combining: utilize sentence combining skills  to write dependent clauses to show logical relationships, to develop parallel clauses, participial phrases, gerunds, and infinitives to achieve clarity, brevity, and emphasis; combine 4-6 kernal sentences into a syntactically correct single complex sentence.

Run-ons and Fragments: recognize and correct run on sentences and fragments including fragments whose predicates are expressed in gerunds, infinitives, and participial instead of verb form.

Common Errors: identify and correct common sentence errors including comma splice, dangling participle, and sentences which lack a verb form in the predicate.

All above Alaskan HSGQE writing benchmarks were compiled by Dr. Niki McCurry for the Galena City School District.

To view the Alaska State Standards for Writing (the content and performance standards for Alaska students), link here.