Languages - National Moderator's Report

Insights

Interact in spoken (target language) to share and respond to information ideas and opinions:
91952, 91956, 91960, 91964, 91968, 91972, 92032, 92036, 92040, 92347, 92351  

Performance overview

This standard requires students to use relevant language in unrehearsed and unscripted conversation and to refer to events or experiences in the present as well as the past or future.

Moderators noticed increased movement towards more natural conversations that were unrehearsed and unscripted. Where the unrehearsed and unscripted element was understood, students were using the language they had learnt to negotiate meaning. Interactions were natural and flowed according to the genuine direction of the conversation as it happened, and they were obviously not question/answer sessions completely prepared in advance.

Good practice was mostly seen in cases where two interactions were submitted and each interaction clearly focused on a different context, one of which ensured discussion about the past and/or future. This allowed students to show clearly different language on more than one event and/or experience.

The best contexts were those which required personal information, ideas, and opinions to be exchanged and where partners were not aware in advance of what their partner’s response might be.

Student-student pair interactions provided the best evidence of interaction. In interactions between a teacher and student, the teachers usually controlled the interactions with students simply responding to questions.

Practices that need strengthening

This standard requires evidence of language to express information, ideas, and opinions relevant to different events or experiences. To achieve at any level, students need to communicate about more than one event or experience and the language used needs to be clearly different in each. For example, talking about a holiday is the experience, rather than the single occurrences which happen within that experience.

For a grade higher than Achieved, there will be evidence of consistency in the range of language across at least two different events or experiences.

Tasks need to ensure that students have the opportunity to meet the criteria of referring to more than one event and/or experience. This can be done by using different contexts which ensure clearly different language topic content. If using one context, it needs to be clear that within that context there is the opportunity to show language from more than one language topic, e.g. if talking about an exchange visit the student could talk about the daily routine in the host family and some of the things they did/visited while in the target language country.

In cases with only one interaction students usually spoke about one experience/event at length, and if there was anything on a second it was generally not of consistent quality or length.

Whilst students will bring learnt and formulaic language to the assessment, the task should not be scripted or practised in advance. Where students are conversing naturally there will be indicators such as pausing to think about responses, conversations moving in the direction the interaction is taking (rather than students simply moving on to their next question despite whatever is said by their partner), and students making errors as they formulate their language, rather than a whole conversation with no error. Error free language is not the expectation at any grade level.

For higher grades, students need to showcase their ability to use different interactive strategies and genuinely listen and respond to their partner’s responses, rather than asking a series of short questions. Asking and answering questions is evidence of only one interactive strategy.

To meet this standard, students must demonstrate use of language at curriculum level 6. Because the interactions are spontaneous, complex sentence structures are not expected. However, students should show what they can do with the language learned in Year 11, beyond Levels 3 and 4. Too often, conversations remained at a basic level – such as asking about favourite subjects or daily routines – without the elaboration expected at this level.

In some instances, students recorded interactions at home. Whilst this alone does not contravene the requirements of the standard, teachers need to be able to assure that this was not practiced before recording.

Long interactions are unnecessary. The best interactions are succinct and focused. However, in some instances students were well short of the recommended sufficiency statements. In the case of the interact standard this is 2-3 minutes of individual contribution.

On an administrative level, there needs to be clear identification of the assessed students. For example, in some instances files are labelled by student name rather than by Learner A, B, C, etc. Identification should be written in the Learner Evidence section of the report and show clearly which student is being assessed, e.g. Learner A is on the right in Interaction 1 and on the left in Interaction 2.  

Communicate in (target language) for a chosen purpose: 91953, 91957, 91961, 91965, 91969, 91973

Performance overview

This standard requires students to use language to express information, ideas, and opinions and to refer to events or experiences in the present as well as the past or future.

The standard allows students choice on the mode they use for evidence presentation – written, spoken, or a combination of writing and speaking.

There was creativity by some students in exploring different forms of assessment. These students chose the mode that best suited their strengths. Many of the videos showed students using their target language skills to communicate personalised and thoughtful reflections on things of interest or importance to them.

The removal of teacher feedback from the drafting process and limitation on resources that can be used has, in many cases, resulted in work that is clearly authentic and representative of the student’s genuine ability. Increasingly, work appears to reflect a more genuine demonstration of the learning acquired.

Most students met the sufficiency guidelines given in the tasks. Whilst quality is more important than quantity, the guidelines provide a realistic expectation of the amount of language needed to demonstrate proficiency. 

Practices that need strengthening

As with 1.1, this standard requires evidence of language to express information, ideas, and opinions relevant to different events or experiences and, to achieve at any level, students need to communicate about more than one event or experience, with the language used being clearly different in each. 

Many students did not clearly demonstrate different language content on more than one event or experience. In some instances, there were one or two sentences on something different. For a grade higher than Achieved, there will be evidence of consistency in the range of language across at least two different events or experiences, and evidence of building on aspects of the information, ideas, and opinion on both.

Tasks need to ensure that either within the single context, or by using more than one context, students can fulfil the plural events/experiences requirement and that the language will be different, i.e. a different theme/topic/learning objective. For example, communicating about daily routines, a favourite place, a home town, an accident, favourite sports, etc. Where one context is used, the task still needs to ensure this element can be met. For example, if communicating about a favourite place the student could describe the place and say why it is special, then give a detailed account of a special event that happened there.   

While authentic work was clearly noted in some submissions, in a number of instances there was still language used that reflected accuracy and complexity not expected at NCEA Level 1. This sometimes contrasted with very simple language used inaccurately in the same piece. This standard limits the resources that can be used, and teacher feedback cannot be given once the assessment event has started.

AI/Internet/Technology can be very effective language learning tools. Assessment, however, requires students to show evidence of what they have already learnt and how they are able to adapt it to the given target language situation/purpose. Digital tools are not permitted once the assessment has begun.

Whilst not all learning happens within the classroom, teachers can put measures in place for when they see language use showing accuracy that is beyond the student’s normal classroom practice, or language use that is well beyond the level expected. Students citing/providing all resources used may also help ensure authenticity when the personal interest topic uses language that has not been taught in class.

Error-free language is not an expectation at any level and, especially when it is a common feature of all the work submitted, is usually an indicator that the above processes may not have been followed.

Whilst students can certainly talk about things such as family members and likes and dislikes, this should not make up the majority of the communication, as this language reflects levels 3 and 4 of the New Zealand Curriculum (NZC). As with the 1.1 standard, evidence needs to clearly reflect language mastery up to and including level 6 of the NZC, and show an ability to talk about events or experiences beyond the immediate context.

Communicate in (target language) in relation to a cultural context: 92033, 92037, 92041, 92348, 92352 

Performance overview

All information pertaining to the 1.2 European and Asian languages standards is pertinent for this standard.

Practices that need strengthening

All information pertaining to the 1.2 European and Asian languages standards is pertinent for this standard.

The following notes apply to the Pacific languages: 

There were some instances where teachers had not moved beyond the old presentation standard, still expecting compulsory speeches. This is not the intention of the standard, which allows much greater flexibility for the mode of assessment and allows student input into the format that their evidence submission will take.

When communicating about a cultural event or experience, students need to move beyond simply presenting the cultural convention (e.g. an invitation to eat) using language that can be rote learnt in advance. Whilst the invitation could be included in the submission, students would need to provide further information, ideas, and opinions about the cultural context, e.g. giving information about when and how this happens and describing an event where this took place.

Whilst it could be one cultural context, as with 1.2 in the other languages, two clearly different events or experiences need to be covered, using different language content. For example, if discussing Polyfest the students could talk about their presentation and how they felt about Polyfest in general, and then give an in-depth description of a feature of the presentation, e.g. the clothing worn, its significance, etc.

Levels 2 and 3

From 2026, the Interaction standards will have the unscripted and unrehearsed elements added to the standard.

In the Interaction and Writing standards, students need to be able to show that they are working reasonably consistently at the level of the grade awarded. For example, for Excellence it would be expected that the student was of a very high calibre and was able to work at this level in most instances. Where one of the two pieces of evidence is clearly at a different and lower level, this would not indicate a genuine Excellence student.

The new Conditions of Assessment clearly set out the authenticity expectations for these standards. As per the Level 1 standards, teachers are no longer permitted to provide feedback and feed forward during the assessment event, and resources that may be used are limited. Teacher involvement during the assessment event is limited to providing students with support on the technical aspects of their work only.

The use of chatbots, generative AI, paraphrasing tools, spell checkers, or other tools that can automatically generate the language content is not permitted, and material generated by these tools should not be submitted as part of the student’s work. 

In the Writing standards, it is still apparent that in some cases these requirements may not yet be in place. Many students’ work shows a level of accuracy and complexity that does not reflect work of a second language learner using only their own learnt language. Writing which represents University level, with little or no error and containing complex grammatical structures, is usually not indicative of authentic work from a second language learner.

Teachers need to monitor the resources being used and put practices in place to help ensure that the work submitted reflects the student’s ability to write in the target language, rather than their ability to put together a collection of work copied from resources. For example, by providing the resources students can use, or surveying the draft process (e.g. with a Google doc monitored by the teacher).

In Pacific languages, the interaction standard often involves group work. Where students are interacting in a group, teachers are reminded that the time sufficiency for students is still the same, i.e. approximately 4 mins of total individual contribution (over the two interactions) for Level 2 and 4-5 minutes for Level 3. Careful identification of students in a large group is especially important.

All standards – Submissions for external moderation 

Performance overview

Most external moderation submissions were of digital rather than physical materials.

Practices that need strengthening

Moderation delays can occur with web hosted sites when security settings prevent moderators from accessing the materials. For hosting sites such as Google Drive or SharePoint, access should be set to public, or a username and password should be provided.  

There were a considerable number of submissions returned to the school due to being unable to be moderated. Moderation submissions should:

• Label student work using Learner A-F (not 1-6 or names).
• Clearly identify the assessed student, e.g. “Student on left in both interactions”. Where this is not possible, additional identification information needs to be provided. For example, a short summary in English of the main points covered by the speaker. It is insufficient to say which student speaks first.   
• Place supporting documents in the shared folder with the work.
• Ensure audibility, i.e. carefully choose settings for recordings without too much background noise (music, traffic, other students).
• Have both interactions for the same student in the one folder, with a label that matches the moderation report, e.g. ‘Learner A’ (not labelled by Tasks). 

Video evidence of the interaction is compulsory for Level 1. This should be one unedited file. Video evidence is recommended for Levels 2 and 3.

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