About this report
The following report gives feedback to assist assessors with general issues and trends that have been identified during external moderation of the level 3 internally assessed standards in 2023. It also provides further insights from moderation material viewed throughout the year and outlines the Assessor Support available for Languages.
On this page
Insights
Writing
Write a variety of text types in clear (target language) to explore and justify varied ideas and perspectives
Standards:
- 91547
- 91552
- 91557
- 91573
- 91567
- 91542
- 91562
- 91683
Performance overview:
This standard requires students to explore and justify varied ideas and perspectives. This involves evaluating and giving explanations or evidence to support the student’s own ideas and perspectives, as well as supporting or challenging those of others.
Good evidence was seen in organised content that evaluated an issue/issues and reflected the students' interest in the topic. A well-reasoned piece of writing, supported by personal views important to the writer, provided the best evidence. Personal opinions were essential to ensure that work was not simply a reflection of resources used.
Practices that need strengthening:
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. 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. 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).
In Asian languages, it is still apparent that students simply describe their different cultural experiences. For this standard, students must go beyond describing and provide evidence of evaluating, exploring and justifying varied ideas and perspectives.
Interact
Interact clearly using spoken (target language) to explore and justify varied ideas and perspectives in different situations
Standards:
- 91545
- 91550
- 91570
- 91555
- 91535
- 91565
- 91540
- 91560
- 91681
Performance overview:
This standard requires students to participate in an active discussion with a degree of fluency and spontaneity. Students are required to account for and sustain their own views, as well as to find out about, evaluate and give evidence to support or challenge the ideas and perspectives of others.
In European languages, there has been a notable improvement in moderation that shows the intent of this standard has been understood. The best evidence for this standard is seen in natural interactions where students have a repertoire of strategies to maintain and sustain a conversation. Rather than moving from one prepared question to the next, they can genuinely interact in simple ways with what has been said by their partner and move the interaction along in the direction indicated by responses.
The tasks generally provide a context which ensures students are able to use language at the expected level.
In Asian languages, there is still a tendency to rely heavily on prepared questions and answers.
Practices that need strengthening:
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 interactions is clearly at a different and lower level, this would not meet a genuine Excellence grade.
In some cases, students appear in several videos of the same task. This is often because classes can be small at this level. However, as this is a standard which requires spontaneity the exact interaction cannot be practiced. Students must use the first interaction they do as the one presented for assessment.
As the interactions are done in real-time, the video should not be stopped and started or edited.
In all languages, there is still some evidence of rote learning and pre-arranged/scripted conversations. These do not meet the criteria of the standard. Students need to have the opportunity to provide unrehearsed language in order to provide evidence of language strategies to maintain and sustain the interaction, e.g. seeking clarification, prompting, pausing, self-correcting, etc. For example, one strategy to keep interactions unrehearsed could be to decide the pairs on the day of the assessment.
Interviews, where one student (or the teacher) asks questions and the other replies, do not usually provide the best evidence for the standard. Students must show they can maintain a conversation using a repertoire of strategies (as per those outlined in EN6 of the standard). Asking and/or answering questions is evidence of only one strategy. Tasks need to ensure that students will both have the full opportunity to control the direction of the conversation and take a full and active part in it.
Where there are more than 2 people in a task, the contribution to the interaction by each participant needs to provide sufficient evidence for a grade. The guideline for this standard is approximately 3 minutes for an individual student’s overall contribution.
Increasingly this year there were problems with work that was unable to be moderated. This was usually due to the moderators' inability to access and/or identify students. The following guidelines will help enable moderation access:
- 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”.
- 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 same folder, with a label that matches the moderation report, e.g. ‘Learner A’.
- Video evidence is recommended. 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.
- Video etiquette of either location or students’ presentation needs to be considered and suitable for assessment. For example, recordings done in a bedroom with others visible, or in a noisy area, hinder sound and/or visual quality of the assessment.
- Ensure the link to the shared folder is accessible with the correct access settings.
Assessor Support
Online
NZQA’s learning management system (Pūtake) offers 150+ easy to access courses, materials and products. These are designed to support teachers, as assessors, to improve their assessment of NCEA standards.
Online, subject-specific or generic, bite-sized learning modules and short courses are now available to complement the traditional face-to-face workshops that NZQA offers. These online courses can be accessed using your Education Sector Logon.
Online Making Assessor Judgements workshops are also available throughout the year. These workshops are structured to guide teachers to improve their understanding of each grade level by examining several full samples of student work. The following standards are available for enrolment in 2024:
- 91119: Interact using spoken French to share information and justify ideas and opinions in different situations
- 91547: Write a variety of text types in clear French to explore and justify varied ideas and perspectives
Feedback from teachers for these workshops indicates that more than 74% of participants agreed or strongly agreed that the content in the module was beneficial:
“Although I was a bit skeptical that this was going to provide me with better understanding of the standard (and marking it), I found I've picked up more certainty about making judgements about the work my students might produce. I'm also more secure about guiding them through the selection of their topic and setting it up so that they are able to complete a successful investigation.”
Exemplars of student evidence for all standards at each level of achievement are available on the NZQA subject page for languages.
NZQA will continue to provide generic modules and workshops designed to improve general assessment practice. The following modules and workshops will be available in 2024:
- Assessment Approaches, an online workshop exploring different methods of assessment
- Culturally Responsive Assessment
- Assessment Guidance – Reviewing Your Practice
- Tāku Reo, Tāku Mahi – My voice, My work, a guide to managing authenticity
- Why Less is More, a guide to reducing volumes of student evidence
- Integrated Assessment
- Modes of Assessment
- Alternative Assessment
- Acknowledging Sources
“This was great! I liked that I could choose from different scenarios, see how sources are used and the way the student answered the question.”
“Reassuring and very thorough. Easy to use/follow.”
We will also continue to offer the Transforming Assessment Praxis programme, an online workshop relevant to all subjects which helps assessors learn about re-contextualising assessment resources and collecting evidence in different ways, in order to better meet the needs of students.
Check the NCEA subject pages on the NZQA website regularly, as more online modules, workshops and courses will be added throughout 2024.
Assessor Practice Tool
The Assessor Practice Tool (APT) will be used to support assessors with the new NCEA standards from 2024 onwards. The purpose of the APT is to allow assessors to practice making assessment judgements and immediately receive feedback on their judgements from a moderation panel. The APT will initially have material for some existing Level 3 standards, with moderated samples for the new Level 1 NCEA standard subjects being added as material becomes available. Material for the new Level 2 and Level 3 standards will be added over time, and all material for the old NCEA standards will be archived.
Material is currently available for:
- French, German, Korean, Japanese 3.5: Write a variety of text types in clear (target language) to explore and justify varied ideas and perspectives
Workshops and presentations
The Best Practice Workshops offered by Assessment and Moderation continue to be viewed by the sector as significantly contributing to improved assessor practice:
“I thought the workshop was very clear and helpful, there were a lot of varied examples of ākonga work discussed and opportunity for participants to discuss and ask questions.”
We offer several options of online workshops and presentations for events to support assessors with the assessment of internally assessed standards. These can be subject-specific, or general assessment support, and tailored to the audience. Virtual presentation slots, online workshops or webinars can be requested to provide targeted support to local, regional or national audiences.