These 7 grammar concepts cause the most lost marks in Year 5 NAPLAN Language Conventions. Master them and watch your child's score improve noticeably.
The Language Conventions section is often where students lose the most marks — not because the concepts are complex, but because they're rarely explicitly taught. Here are the 7 most common mistakes in Year 5 NAPLAN.
1. Subject-Verb Agreement
"The team are winning" vs "The team is winning" — collective nouns cause confusion. Students need to be aware that collective nouns in Australian English can take singular or plural verbs, and consistency matters.
2. Apostrophes for Possession vs Contraction
The apostrophe is the most misused punctuation mark. Students confuse "it's" (it is) with "its" (belonging to it), and often add apostrophes to plurals incorrectly ("apple's" instead of "apples").
3. Comma Splices
A comma splice joins two complete sentences with only a comma: "I went to the shops, I bought milk." Teach students to use a full stop, semicolon, or coordinating conjunction (and, but, so) instead.
4. Homophones
There/their/they're, your/you're, to/too/two, and affect/effect are tested regularly. Create a visual chart showing each usage with a memorable example sentence.
Use SmartNAPLAN's language conventions quiz to drill these specific concepts — it tracks which homophones and grammar rules your child consistently gets wrong.
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