Record S7 · 1979
S7: Persuasive Public Speech
Written spring 1979; published in the December 1980 NAEP report. Age 17 in school; individual grade unknown.
Original student excerpt
I am supporting the plan because this is a very good idea. I feel it would be good for the young people. They can have a goal to refurnishing the old house and after it can be a very rewarding experience.
Three consecutive sentences from the handwritten response; original language preserved.
Prompt and conditions
Exact prompt. Some high school students have proposed converting an old house into a recreation center where young people might drop in evenings for talk and relaxation. Some local residents oppose the plan on the grounds that the center would depress property values in the neighborhood and attract undesirable types. A public hearing has been called. Write a brief speech that you would make supporting or opposing the plan. Remember to take only ONE point of view. Organize your arguments carefully and be as convincing as possible. Space is provided below and on the next three pages.
- Source conditions
- Prompt Facts No Sources; prompt scenario and stated opposition only.
- Time
- 16.6 minutes. Appendix records 998 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
- 2 of 4 — position plus minimal unlinked defense. Whole-response persuasive primary-trait score; not a classroom grade.
- Form
- Score Only; response-specific.
- Revision after feedback
- None survives.
Read the evidence coding
Conceptual claimThe recreation-center plan should be supported.
Ideas and relationships4 coded units. General good, youth benefit, renovation goal, and reward form a brief means-end chain.
AbstractionEmerging
Causal reasoningSimple
Qualification / counterargumentNone
Evidence useHypothetical Example
OrganizationPosition Benefit Outcome
Sentence controlMeaning Clear Uneven
Lexical precisionGeneral
Articulation limit‘Good’ is repeated without definition, and stated opposition is not addressed.
These are descriptive codes, not scores. No composite or rank is calculated. Primary-trait score 2 was the modal majority band (57.5%); it states a position but does not systematically develop an argument.