Record S10 · 1979
S10: Explanatory Business Letter
Written spring 1979; published in the December 1980 NAEP report. Age 17 in school; individual grade unknown.
Original student excerpt
There must be an error on your part because I have NEVER recieved the electric blanket I have been billed for Every month since I ordered the product. I have been billed but I have never seen the blanket. Therefore I would ask you to send the electric blanket or stop sending me the bill.
Three consecutive sentences from the handwritten response; original language preserved.
Prompt and conditions
Exact prompt. Suppose that on June 4, 1978, you ordered an electric blanket that Big Mart had advertised for $14.98. On June 15, you received a letter stating that the supply of electric blankets was temporarily exhausted, but that your order would be filled shortly. You have never received the electric blanket, but every month since then you have received a computerized bill for the $14.98. Now, after three months, you have received the letter below. BIG MART INC. P.O. Box 29 Buffalo, New York 14240 September 10, 1978 In reply refer to Account #4377 Dear Customer: According to our records your account has been unpaid for three months. If there has been an error, please let us know what the problem is. We hope that within ten days we will receive $14.98. Otherwise, we will have to refer your account to our collection service. Very truly yours, Jason Jones Accounts Manager Pretend that you are Pat Brown and write a letter to Mr. Jones explaining why you never sent the $14.98.
- Source conditions
- Prompt Document No Research Sources; prompt business letter only.
- Time
- 14.9 minutes. Appendix records 896 seconds.
- Production / archive
- handwritten; anonymous facsimile in 1980 report.
- Drafting
- timed first draft; no feedback revision.
- Population and selection
- National probability sample of in-school U.S. 17-year-olds; individual grade/geography suppressed. NAEP probability task sample; displayed paper purposively selected as score-point exemplar.
Scorer and feedback role
Institutional Assessor. Not an authenticated classroom-teacher feedback pair.
- Original source classification
- 3 of 4 — successful information transmission. Adds denial of receipt and clear future direction plus identifying information; whole-response task-specific score.
- Form
- Score Only; response-specific.
- Revision after feedback
- None survives.
Read the evidence coding
Conceptual claimThe company has erred and should deliver or stop billing.
Ideas and relationships4 coded units. Error, repeated billing, nonreceipt, and two-part remedy form an explicit practical inference.
AbstractionEmerging
Causal reasoningMultistep
Qualification / counterargumentAlternative Remedy
Evidence usePrompt And Transaction Detail
OrganizationDiagnosis History Remedy
Sentence controlMeaning Clear
Lexical precisionTask Specific
Articulation limitThe excerpt gives no date, account number, or enclosure; tone and remedy are concise rather than elaborated.
These are descriptive codes, not scores. No composite or rank is calculated. Primary-trait score 3 was modal (44.8%); clear functional success without the top band’s extra documentation.