Languages - National Moderator's Report

Insights

1.1 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. 

In many instances it was clear that the past and/or future element of the language requirement had been understood. Clear evidence of this criteria helped ensure that students were working at the appropriate level of the curriculum. 

Moderators noticed movement towards more natural conversations that are 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.   

Student-student pair interactions provided the best evidence of interaction. In interactions with a teacher and student, the teachers usually controlled the interactions with students simply responding to questions. In some cases, teachers did most of the speaking. For a grade above Achieved there will be evidence of interactive strategies (plural). Asking and answering questions is only one interactive strategy.  

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 various 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. 

Where students submitted two interactions the above requirement was easier to achieve, and the experiences were clearly differentiated. 

Tasks need to ensure that students have this opportunity to talk about 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 Asian languages, there were some cases of the task not allowing the past and/or future element to be elaborated naturally. Tasks need to ensure all elements of the standard can be met. 

The expectation for time sufficiency is two to three minutes of individual contribution. Where students submitted only one interaction, many obviously struggled to meet this guideline and interactions became stilted and repetitive.  

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

The most successful evidence for this standard was two short interactions on different topics. This approach is recommended for all but the very able students. 

Tasks need to ensure that students can produce language at the appropriate level – up to and including level 6 of the New Zealand Curriculum (NZC). For example, in the task where photos are discussed, students need to move beyond describing the physical characteristics of people in the photo (name, age, what they are wearing, etc) as this reflects levels 3 and 4 of the NZC. The students could talk about what they were doing when the photo was taken (e.g. where they went, what they did there, whether they liked it and reasons why, etc), which would enable them to show evidence of referring to events in the past and also reflect the appropriate level. 

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.  

1.2 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. 

Teachers cannot choose the mode for the students. However, it may be helpful to assist students in choosing the mode which best suits their strengths. For example, many students are communicating in written target language, when speaking may be better suited.  

The removal of teacher feedback from the drafting process and limitation on resources that can be used have, in many cases, resulted in work that is clearly authentic and representative of the students’ genuine ability.  

Most students met the sufficiency guidelines given in the tasks. 

Practices that need strengthening: 

As for 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 and the language used needs to be clearly different in each.  

Many students did not show clearly 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. 

Tasks need to ensure that either within the single context, or by using more than one context, students can communicate on a minimum of two different events and/or experiences, 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 hometown, 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 and then give a detailed account of a special event that happened there.    

In a number of instances there was language used that reflected accuracy and complexity not expected at Level 1. This sometimes contrasted with very simple language used incorrectly in the same piece. This standard limits the resources that can be used and teacher feedback cannot be given once the assessment has started.   

AI/internet/technology can be very effective language learning tools. However, Assessment 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 that is depicting 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 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. 

1.2 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 were noticed that 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) that uses 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, using different language content, need to be covered.  

Levels 2 and 3 

From 2025 for Level 2 and 2026 for Level 3, 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. 

In the writing standards it is still apparent that many students are relying too heavily on the resources and use the language from these resources, with little or no change, in their work. 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 student. 

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. An example of how this could be done could be to provide the resources students can use or to survey the draft process, e.g. with a Google doc monitored by the teacher. 

All standards – Submissions for external moderation  

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.   

Video evidence is compulsory for Level 1. For the interaction this will be one unedited file. Video evidence is recommended for Levels 2 and 3.  

Feedback

Give us feedback on this report (external link)