Languages webcasts

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This webcast is intended to provide guidance and advice on the requirements for Languages 1.1 and 1.2 with specific focus on EN1 and the requirement for students to refer to events or experiences.

This webcast is intended to provide guidance and advice on the requirements for Languages 1.1 and 1.2 with specific focus on EN1 and the requirement for students to refer to events or experiences.

In Explanatory Note 1 both events and experiences are mentioned as plural. This could be more than one event, more than one experience, or a combination of an event and an experience.  

As the standard requires more than one, the events or experiences will be clearly different.  This means that that there will be evidence of mastery of different language content in each event or experience.

Events and experiences are very similar. What is important here, is that whatever is chosen provides sufficient scope for the student to fulfil all criteria of the standard. If the standard were to require only one experience it would be understood that this would be a broad context that encompasses a range of information, ideas and opinions on a topic, context, theme or learning objective. This is no different with two events/experiences. Two different broad contexts are required. For example, the experience might be a holiday which recounts when and where, and the activities that they did. The second experience could be an in-depth recount of a memorable meal at a restaurant or an accident or incident that happened.  

Another example could be a student preparing a video for an exchange student coming to stay. They could talk about their hometown and what there is to see/do there and then talk about their own daily routine and daily experiences so that the student will be aware what their typical day will look like. Or, the student could also talk about an event that may happen while the exchange student is there, or a holiday they may take.

Merit and Excellence require a range of language. This needs to be reasonably consistent across the multiple events/experiences so tasks need to ensure there is enough breath for the student to provide language at the appropriate level on both. Students also need to move beyond level 3 and 4 of the New Zealand Curriculum, for example more than physical descriptions of family members. 

In the 1.1 students are required to provide 2-3 minutes of individual contribution overall on the two different events/experiences. Moderation is showing that two shorter interactions are more successful than one long one where the balance of language across the topics or contexts tends to be very unequal.

For more explanation and examples of what is required for this aspect, see the exemplars on the NZQA website.   

In 2025 there will be annotated samples of student evidence on the Assessor Practice Tool for these standards. 

Further assessor support for the internal Achievement Standards in Languages, can be found on our assessor support catalogue available on the NZQA website.   

Thank you.