The
national curriculum statement,
The national curriculum statement, English in the New
Zealand Curriculum, says students should be able to engage with and
enjoy language in all its varieties. They should be able to understand,
respond to, and use oral, written and visual language effectively in a variety
of contexts.
Language is broad and pervasive. It is at the heart of learning, life and
cultures. Because it is central to intellectual, emotional and social development
it has an essential role throughout the school curriculum. There is seldom
a time or place in any learning area where it is not present.
Language
and Communication
A key purpose of language is communication. Through language we are able
to communicate with others for a variety of purposes.
Language allows us to share knowledge, experiences, information, feelings
and ideas. It also helps us to examine our own and others’ experiences
and ideas and to give them meaning.
Communication through language involves connections and interactions between
messages that are given and received. We produce messages by speaking, writing
and presenting. We consume messages by listening, reading and viewing. The
action of one dimension typically leads to responses in another.
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within and beyond language as a learning area
Because language is essentially an interactive process, the oral,
written and visual components are highly interrelated. Listening,
for example, may require watching someone’s body language
to fully understand the overall communication. When listening to
and watching a demonstration, or dramatic performance, there will
often be visual elements that add important meaning to what is said
and listened to. Listening and viewing can be inseparable dimensions
in the receiving and understanding of messages.
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The idea of interrelationships
is even greater when the components of language are applied throughout and
beyond the curriculum. Much of the learning that takes place in mathematics
or social studies, for example, is inescapably language dependent. Our day-to-day
transactions of personal and social activity rely heavily on language and
its communicative powers. For these reasons, society and schools have a
major responsibility for giving students a good command of language and
the ability to use it effectively to convey and understand meanings.
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Characteristics
within language components
Accepting the connections that exist within and beyond the components of
language, it is recognised that there are particular skills that have special
and distinctive relevance within each component. Effective listening, for
example, requires abilities to obtain information and respond appropriately,
to establish relationships and interact with others, and to reflect upon
ideas, experiences and opinions. Viewing involves the development of such
skills as recognising the interaction between words and images, and thinking
critically about the intentions, effects and impact of visual messages.
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Assessment
of language components
One of the purposes of national monitoring is to find out and report on
what students know and can do in relation to important learning outcomes.
Since language and communication is an extensive domain, it requires organised
treatment for assessment and reporting. Within the four-year programme of
monitoring, the Project has chosen an arrangement that focuses on speaking
and reading in one year, and listening, viewing and writing in another.
On each occasion the emphasis is on understandings and skills that are particularly
relevant within, and to some extent between, the respective components.
This treatment of the language domain is not intended to suggest that each
component represents a separate or isolated curricular experience, but rather
to acknowledge the distinctive learning skills of each.
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Listening
and Viewing
Children first encounter language and learn to use and interpret it
in its oral and visual forms well before they commence formal education.
The development of their language from quite basic beginnings through
to more sophisticated constructions results from increasingly rich
and complex opportunities and interactions in personal, social and
cultural settings. These experiences lead to understandings about
the meanings, effects and consequences of what is heard and seen,
and help children gain greater control over their environment. |
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Frameworks
for national monitoring assessment
National monitoring task frameworks are developed with the Project’s
curriculum advisory panels. These frameworks have two key purposes. They
provide a valuable guideline structure for the development and selection
of tasks, and they bring into focus those important dimensions of the learning
domains that are arguably the basis for valid analyses of students’
skills, knowledge and understandings.
The assessment frameworks are organising tools that interrelate understandings
with skills and processes. They are intended to be flexible and broad enough
to encourage and enable the development of tasks that lead to meaningful
descriptions of what students know and can do. They are also designed to
help ensure a balanced representation of important learning outcomes.
The frameworks for listening and viewing have central organising themes
supported by three interrelated aspects.
The listening theme, “constructing meaning from spoken messages and
communications for a range of purposes”, and the viewing theme, “constructing
meaning from visual texts”, together endorse the close relationships
between these two components of language. They also highlight the centrality
and fundamental importance of active pursuit of meaning.The
understandings aspect of each framework summarises important ideas
about the actions, impact and consequences of the ways in which messages
might be shaped, communicated, interpreted and used.The
purposes aspect identifies some of the major contexts in which
listening and viewing are applied.
The skills aspect lists key abilities that students could be expected
to demonstrate while engaging in listening and viewing for particular purposes.
The performance of these skills and processes is highly related to demonstrations
of ideas listed in the understandings aspect.
The motivation aspect of the frameworks draws attention to the
importance of having information about students’ interests, attitudes,
confidence and involvement in their listening and viewing activities, both
within and beyond the school setting. Educational research and practice
confirm the impact of student motivation and attitudes on progress and learning
outcomes as an important adjunct to opportunities to learn.
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NEMP
LISTENING FRAMEWORK
Constructing
meaning from spoken messages and communications for a range of purposes.
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SKILLS |
•
Listening, speaking and thinking are interactive and interdependent.
• Listening can be passive or active.
• Comprehension of spoken messages is affected by the interests,
purposes and background of the listener.
• Listeners are expected to follow social conventions which vary
according to context.
• Different cultures have different conventions and expectations.
• Listening involves recognition and interpretation of non-verbal
messages that accompany verbal communications.
• Active listening requires the listener to organise, analyse
and relate content to previous knowledge. |
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Attending and concentrating.
• Recalling and retelling what others have said.
• Comprehending literal meaning.
• Identifying main ideas or themes.
• Summarising.
• Thinking critically.
• Distinguishing fact from opinion; recognising bias and prejudice.
• Making inferences.
• Drawing appropriate conclusions.
• Gauging mood and occasion.
• Knowing how and when to respond.
• Listening with empathy.
• Reading body language (smiles, nods, pauses).
• Exploring language and multiple meanings of messages.
• Relating unfamiliar words and phrases to context to derive
meaning. |
| PURPOSES |
MOTIVATION |
• Participating in conversation.
• Following a story.
• Obtaining information.
• Identifying opinions and viewpoints.
• Critical evaluation.
• Enjoyment and inspiration.
• Acquiring new language and understandings. |
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Enjoyment from listening to a variety of sources.
•
Awareness of the benefits of listening.
• Commitment to being a good listener. |
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NEMP
VIEWING FRAMEWORK
Constructing
meaning from visual texts. |
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SKILLS |
•
Viewing is a complex thinking process which involves the integration
of information from many sources.
• Visual messages are created to inform, persuade and entertain.
• Different messages and meanings can be drawn from a visual
text.
• Responses to visual information can be critical or passive.
• Particular effects can be created by combining visual, aural
and verbal elements.
• Visual effects are used to appeal to different moods, feelings,
occasions and settings. |
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Comprehending literal meaning.
• Interpreting symbolic elements.
• Recognising the interaction between words and images.
• Comparing written and visual versions of texts.
• Thinking critically about the intentions, effects and impact
of visual messages.
• Identifying and analysing the techniques and conventions
of visual language in a variety of contexts.
• Exploring ideas and multiple meanings.
• Recognising how visual texts are tailored to appeal to particular
audiences.
• Reading body language |
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MOTIVATION |
•
Following a story.
• Obtaining information.
• Identifying opinions and viewpoints.
• Critical evaluation.
• Enjoyment and inspiration.
• Acquiring visual language and understandings. |
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Enthusiasm for viewing and responding to a wide variety of visual
information.
• Voluntary engagement with visual language.
• Commitment to exploring the meanings of visual messages.
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The
choice of tasks for national monitoring
The choice of tasks for national monitoring is guided by a number
of educational and practical considerations. Uppermost in any decisions
relating to the choice or administration of a task is the central
consideration of validity and the effect that a whole range of decisions
can have on this key attribute. Tasks are chosen because they provide
a good representation of important knowledge and skills, but also
because they meet a number of requirements to do with their administration
and presentation. For example:
- Each
task with its associated materials needs to be structured to ensure
a high level of consistency in the way it is presented by specially
trained teacher administrators to students of wide-ranging backgrounds
and abilities, and in diverse settings throughout New Zealand.
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- Tasks need
to span the expected range of capabilities of year 4 and 8 students
and to allow the most able students to show the extent of their abilities
while also giving the least able the opportunity to show what they can
do.
- Materials
for tasks need to be sufficiently portable, economical, safe and within
the handling capabilities of students. Task materials also need to have
meaning for students.
- The time needed
for completing an individual task has to be balanced against the total
time available for all of the assessment tasks, without denying students
sufficient opportunity to demonstrate their capabilities.
- Each task
needs to be capable of sustaining the attention and effort of students
if they are to produce responses that truly indicate what they know
and can do. Since neither the student nor the school receives immediate
or specific feedback on performance, the motivational potential of the
assessment is critical.
- Tasks need
to avoid unnecessary bias on the grounds of gender, culture or social
background while accepting that it is appropriate to have tasks that
reflect the interests of particular groups within the community.
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Listening
and viewing assessment tasks
Thirty-seven listening and viewing tasks were administered, using three
different approaches. Twenty-five were administered in one-to-one interview
settings, where instructions were presented orally and students used materials
and visual or auditory information, often presented on laptop computers.
Eleven tasks were attempted in a stations arrangement, where students
worked independently on a series of tasks. The final task was administered
using a paper-and-pencil approach in an “independent” session.
Twenty-seven
of the thirty-seven tasks were the same for both year 4 and year 8. One
task followed the same administration and marking procedures for both
year 4 and year 8, but included fewer components for year 4 students.
Two tasks were administered only to year 4 students, and seven tasks only
to year 8 students.
Trend
tasks
Ten of the tasks were used previously, entirely or in part, in the 1998
listening and viewing assessments. These were called link tasks in the
1998 report, but were not described in detail to avoid any distortions
in the 2002 results that might have occurred if the tasks had been widely
available for use in schools since 1998. In the current report, these
tasks are called trend tasks, and are used to examine trends in student
performance: whether they have improved, stayed constant or declined over
the four-year period since the 1998 assessments.
Link
tasks
To allow similar comparisons between the 2002 and 2006 assessments, 16
of the tasks used for the first time in 2002 have been designated link
tasks. Results of student performance on these tasks are presented in
this report, but the tasks are described only in general terms because
they will be used again in 2006.
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Marking
methods
The students’ responses were assessed using specially designed marking
procedures. The marking criteria used had been developed in advance by
Project staff, but were sometimes modified as a result of issues raised
during the marking. Tasks that required marker judgement and were common
to year 4 and year 8 were intermingled during marking sessions, with the
goal of ensuring that the same scoring standards and procedures were used
for both. Similarly, where the marking of trend tasks required substantial
marker judgement, specially selected representative samples of the 1998
performances were re-marked, intermingled with the 2002 performances.
This helped to ensure that the trend information would be trustworthy,
unaffected by changes in marking standards between 1998 and 2002.
Task
by task reporting
National monitoring assessment is reported task by task so that results
can be understood in relation to what the students were asked to do.
Access
tasks
 Teachers
and principals have expressed considerable interest in access to NEMP
task materials and marking instructions, so that they can use them within
their own schools. Some are interested in comparing the performance of
their own students to national results on some aspects of the curriculum,
while others want to use tasks as models of good practice. Some would
like to modify tasks to suit their own purposes, while others want to
follow the original procedures as closely as possible. There is obvious
merit in making available carefully developed tasks that are seen to be
highly valid and useful for assessing student learning.
Some of the tasks
in this report cannot be made available in this way. Link tasks must be
saved for use in four years’ time, and other tasks use copyright
or expensive resources that cannot be duplicated by NEMP and provided
economically to schools. There are also limitations on how precisely a
school’s administration and marking of tasks can mirror the ways
that they are administered and marked by the Project. Nevertheless, a
substantial number of tasks are suitable to duplicate for teachers and
schools. In this report, these access tasks are identified with the symbol
above, and can be purchased in a kit from the New Zealand Council for
Educational Research (P.O. Box 3237, Wellington 6000, New Zealand).
Teachers are
also encouraged to use the NEMP web site (http://nemp.otago.ac.nz)
to view video clips and listen to audio material associated with
some of the tasks. |
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