Objective 1 states that the student will produce an effective composition for a specific purpose. Objective 2 requires that the composition demonstrates proper spelling, grammar, punctuation and sentence structure. The TAKS exam evaluates these two objectives with a prompted essay question. Lessons may include subject-driven themes, student journals and other exercises that allow the instructor to evaluate the student's writing skills and his progress toward these objectives. Students may read their compositions in class for discussion; teachers may also introduce sample compositions from previous TAKS exams to use as examples of quality writing (see Resources).
Through multiple-choice proofreading and editing exercises, the student should demonstrate the ability to revise a draft by adding, deleting or modifying sentences to better reflect the underlying purpose of a paragraph. Lessons for this objective might include exercises using writing samples with irrelevant sentences, contradictions or missing elements that the students can learn to identify.
The student must demonstrate the ability to apply standard grammar and sentence construction techniques to communicate clearly. The use of varying sentence types, including compound sentences, prepositional phrases and conjunctions will be tested using multiple-choice questions. Lessons will include sample sentences for class discussion.
Subject/verb agreement, correct use of adjectives, correct use of object pronouns ("Sally greeted Joe and me") will be tested with multiple-choice questions for this objective. Lessons in which students are taught to identify incorrect word usage and suggest corrections will prepare them for this portion of the test.
The final objective is demonstrated through proofreading questions, in which the students must correctly identify misspellings, punctuation and capitalization errors, inappropriate contractions ("its" versus "it's") and grammatical errors. Lessons for this objective should include exercises in which the students proofread their own work and that of their classmates.