Virginia SOL 12.W.1.B.ii
The Standard
Create clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style matches the intended audience and purpose of the workplace and/or post-secondary education and language in informal and formal contexts.
Virginia Standards of Learning for English
Teacher's field guide
What This Standard Means
What Students Need to Do
- Students write workplace or college documents that are easy to follow and suited to a specific reader and goal. They choose an effective structure and shift between formal and informal language as needed.
What Mastery Looks Like
- Students can produce clear instructions, reports, or emails with a logical order and useful details. They adjust vocabulary, tone, format, and level of explanation for a professor, supervisor, coworker, or peer.
Common Misconceptions
- Students may think formal writing requires long words or stiff sentences. They may use casual phrases with supervisors or professors, omit needed details, or organize information in the order they remembered it.
How to Assess It
- Exit ticket: Write a six-sentence email to a supervisor explaining a missed deadline and proposing a solution. Then rewrite the opening as an informal message to a coworker.
Lesson moves
Ways to Teach It
Give groups scrambled workplace safety instructions, then have them order the steps, add headings, and revise unclear commands.
Compare an email to a professor with a text to a friend, then explain three language choices that fit each audience.
Play Audience Switch: draw a reader and purpose card, then rewrite the same technical paragraph in sixty seconds.
Use a local job posting to draft a concise application email that follows its requested format and professional tone.
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Related Standards
- 12.W.3.D
Write and revise to a standard acceptable both in the workplace and in postsecondary education.
- 11.W.3.D
Write and revise to a standard acceptable both in the workplace and in post-secondary education.
- 11.W.1.C
Write to describe personal qualifications for potential occupational or educational opportunities, producing clear and coherent writing in which the development...
- 12.W.3.C
Edit writing for appropriate conventions, style, and language in informal and formal contexts. (See Language Usage for grade level expectations)
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