Presentation
Give a spoken presentation that communicates information, ideas and opinions
Updated December 2016. The section on feedback and feed forward has been updated.
Feedback and feed forward on drafts
Teacher feedback and feed forward on students’ drafts should be holistic to ensure that the final product remains a true representation of the student’s ability. More than one opportunity for feedback will compromise authenticity. Complex language, with few or no errors, may indicate that too much feedback has been given.
Language should be the student’s own work. Resources should be used appropriately, and large chunks of lifted language should be either avoided completely or referenced and not included in the assessed work.
Content
These standards involve communicating information and expressing and justifying ideas and opinions. There should be evidence of each of these within the presentation.
The best presentations are to the point and close to the allocated times. Development does not equal length. Suggested time for a level 2 presentation is two minutes.
The purpose of this presentation is delivery to an audience. This could be either a face to face or an online audience. Tasks should ensure that students will have a context which requires a presentation as opposed to a piece of writing, e.g. a video/podcast application for a place on an exchange.
Communication and language
As this is a spoken presentation, inconsistencies do not relate solely to errors in vocabulary or grammar. Inconsistencies in communication may relate to the following: language features, pronunciation, intonation, rhythm patterns, delivery speed, audibility, stress patterns, or tones. Incorrect language/inconsistencies will affect the grade to the extent that they hinder communication.
Language features should be taken into account when allocating a grade. A speaker who speaks very quickly without pausing appropriately for new sentences may have a presentation which would receive Excellence as a piece of writing, but which will receive a Merit for this standard. Inconsistencies in delivery speed and stress patterns may mean that the communication of the message is hindered. Delivery may ultimately affect the grade.
The nature of the language features used will also be determined by the fact that this is a spoken presentation, e.g. at level 2 this could be the use of rhetorical questions.
Delivery of presentation
Cue cards/text should only be used for support, and students may not read their presentation in its entirety. If they do so, they cannot be awarded the standard.
On this page
Interact
Interact to share information and justify ideas and opinions in different situations
Updated December 2016. This document has been updated to include language features.
Language features
A repertoire of language features and strategies to maintain the interaction is required for this standard. For this reason, it does not produce evidence towards this standard if students write and learn scripted role plays by heart, or otherwise prepare the total interaction beforehand. Indicators of the ability to maintain an interaction will not be evident in such exchanges.
Features and strategies such as pausing, negotiating meaning, prompting, seeking clarification, etc. can only be seen in evidence when the student is unaware of all questions that are asked, and has not prepared all answers. For this reason, the use of cue cards would also render evidence invalid.
Interactions where students can react in a genuine way, and where they are able to naturally control the direction of the interaction, give students the opportunity to meet the criteria.
Range
The standard calls for a minimum of two interactions, and these must be in different situations. This will mean that the context and/or purpose and/or type will be different for each interaction, e.g. negotiating the best way to spend a Saturday evening with friends will necessitate different language from from a discussion of what students did in the holidays.
Assessing the collection of evidence
The grade will be awarded for the collection of interactions assessed as a whole, i.e. each interaction will not be assessed individually - the grade will be derived from the overall quality of the work. Students must show that they are working consciously and reasonably consistently at the level, rather than accidentally and occasionally.
The sample tasks suggest about four minutes interaction in total for level 2.
Language
Incorrect language/inconsistencies will only affect a grade if they hinder communication. It is important to note that accuracy is not a criterion of this standard. In a realistic conversation by learners of a second language, errors are natural and should not be overly penalised.
Whilst inconsistencies that do not affect communication will not affect the grade, for Excellence, there needs to be sufficient language, outside the language with errors, that contributes to the criteria of the successful use of a range of language.
At level 2 students need to move beyond simply supplying information and into justifying expressed ideas and opinions. This can be done by giving evidence or explanations which support these views and/or the views of others. Over the collected evidence there will be evidence of both sharing and justifying.
Writing
Write a variety of text types to convey information, ideas and opinions in genuine contexts
Updated December 2016. The section on feedback and feed forward has been updated.
Feedback and feed forward on drafts
Teacher feedback and feed forward on students’ drafts should be holistic to ensure that the final product remains a true representation of the student’s ability. More than one opportunity for feedback will compromise authenticity. Complex language, with few or no errors, may indicate that too much feedback has been given.
Use of resources
Authentic texts, native speakers, exemplars and digital tools are resources. Students need to be aware that they cannot copy large chunks of text, and that they must adapt and rework the language. Students need to reference direct text in their work, and this will not count as evidence of language. It is inappropriate to have native speakers providing large chunks of language or correcting drafts.
Text type
The context and/or purpose and/or text type (a minimum of two) will be different for each piece, e.g. a personal email to a French host family, a blog posting on the class French site about an activity that has taken place and their opinion about it, an invitation to a future party including instructions on what to bring, etc.
Curriculum level
The standard requires students to use language to communicate information and express and justify ideas and opinions. Whilst students are free to use all language they have at their disposal, a level 2 task cannot expect students to use language beyond that required to achieve the standard. To achieve the standard, within the texts, there needs to be evidence of each of the above.
Assessing the collection of evidence
The grade will be awarded for the pieces of writing assessed as a whole, i.e. each piece will not be assessed individually; rather, the grade will be derived from the overall quality of the work. Students must show that they are working consciously and reasonably consistently at the level, rather than accidentally and occasionally.
Incorrect language/inconsistencies will only affect a grade if they hinder communication. Whilst inconsistencies that do not affect communication will not affect the grade, for Excellence, there needs to be sufficient language, outside the language with errors, that contributes to the criteria of capable selection and successful use of language.
Word limits
The sample tasks suggest the following approximate word/character/kana count for level 2: 400 characters for Chinese, 800 kana for Japanese, or 400 words for all other languages. These are a realistic expectation of the amount that may be needed to provide sufficient evidence from which to make a judgement. At all times quality is more important than quantity.