The citizenship test was introduced by the Australian Government fairly recently. As a western country, Australia is currently the most recent developed western country to have a citizenship test. However, there is a current debate being held on why is the citizenship test held for and what is the government really testing?
According to the SBS news site, the Australian Government has now changed some of the content that is to be tested in the citizenship test and states that “would-be new Australian citizens will be quizzed on their understanding of their civic duty and responsibilities of citizenship rather than facing questions about Australia's sporting heroes ” as it had previously asked questions about a Australian cricket player, Sir Donald Bradman and other irrelevant information. However, when questioned to why was the citizenship test was even introduced, a minister who appeared on an SBS program called ‘Insight’ argued that this test was made to test English proficiency of the ‘new’ Australians. The test was also made to give the new-comers a view on what is it mean to be Australian and what Australian values are? ,while stating all this information in a book that the participants would need to read.
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Peer Reviews
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Quality of writing
The Quality of Written Communication is excellent as there are no causes for concern with regard to grammar, spelling and punctuation. The candidate's language is proficient and shows the examiner the candidate is confident with their essay structure and writing style.
Level of analysis
The candidate makes a good attempt to argue the validity of the Citizenship Test in Australia, and shows evidence of someone who has carried out extensive research into it's legislative inception and response. However, the argument falls relatively flat after the first paragraph - I would advise against any candidate hoping to write an effective argument to avoid stating "In my opinion" so explicitly because it lays the foundation for a very subjective account - one that would need some very ample statistics and expert voices in order to validate the objectivity good arguments need. So in conclusion, the candidate would only need to implement more rhetorical devices and create more of a sense of objectivity to bring their grade up, but as it stands, this answer is on track for a strong C grade for GCSE.
Response to question
This is a Writing to Argue task. And the candidate attempts to make a decent argument though there are fundamental failures with their answer. Whilst they make a good case and the first paragraph of their essay is akin to something one might expect to find in an actual newspaper article, the candidate's argument techniques don't follow up in the second paragraph. Their is not a sufficient use of arguing skills, linguistic or rhetoric, by which the candidate could form a good argument. Use of metaphor, exaggeration, opinion-as-fact and voice of the expert would help to fortify this argument by appearing as more of a factual argument, rather than one that shoots itself in the foot with "In my opinion" - because the candidate explicitly states they are voicing their own opinion, they cannot achieve a high grade due to not basing their argument on more factual groundings.