Let’s say that you have a group of workers who, as part of their job, have to read and fill out a shift report. You have to identify which skill area or areas are involved, which indicators of competence are relevant, which aspects of communication are involved and at what level the task is pitched.

The first bit is easy: to read and fill out a shift report involves both reading and writing. However, you may also find that oral skills are a critical part of carrying out this task. There may also be some numeracy involved in the actual completion of the report. One set of information in the NRS has the Indicators of Competence organised by mode: reading, writing, oral communication, numeracy and learning strategies across each of the 5 levels. You can access this information by selecting the Using the NRS section of this web site.

By looking closely at the indicators of competence in each skill area, you will start to get a sense of the increasing level of complexity and decreasing level of familiarity as you move from Level 1 to Level 5.

If the shift report is familiar to this group of workers, have a look at the language and literacy features at Levels 2 and 3. A shift report that uses simple questions and instructions, requires writing that needs some attention to the principles of time and importance and has a predictable structure and familiar vocabulary, is likely to correspond to Level 2.

A shift report that requires the use of complex and compound sentences, dependent clauses and perhaps graphical information that summarises data, is more likely to correspond to Level 3.

For further confirmation of the level, there are specific indicators of competence that relate to a task such as filling in a shift report. The skill of writing such a report can be linked to indicator 2.4 in the NRS (Completes forms or writes notes using factual or personal information relating to familiar contexts) or Indicator 3.4 (Communicates relationships between ideas through selecting and using grammatical structures and notations which are appropriate to the purpose).

Paring this right down, if the workers have a standard reporting format that requires single sentence responses, some annotation of time and numerical data and a brief summary of the status of the job, then it’s likely to be a Level 2 task.

If the report is less structured but requires more complex responses to the work at hand and involves interpretation of data, then it’s more likely to be a Level 3 task. If the workers are expected to complete such reports without assistance, then it’s even more likely to be at Level 3.

The last decision you need to make is which Aspect of Communication this task fits into.

The six aspects are not discreet or fixed. Writing a shift report involves following a set of procedures (Procedural Communication), and may also involve language and numeracy related to the function of technology (Technical Communication).

Therefore, one task may address a number of aspects although it is preferable that you report on the most dominant aspect.

Having decided on the level, the indicator and the aspect, an NRS report indicating that six of the workers involved in the WELL program had developed skills in writing shift reports could look like this: