What is Lea Faka-Tonga about?
In conversation with
Fane Ketu'u
Teokota'i Tarai
Lemoa Henry S Fesulua'i
Transcript below:
I think the biggest change is probably going to be changing out of the old system and creating this new system. What we've created, what education has created, we've generated a generation of credit crunchers, of credit gatherers. And even for us as teachers, because we've been driven by assessment so long that now with these changes:
What does that mean for me as a teacher?
What is that going to mean for our young people?
What is it going to mean for our parents?
Because we've been driving this Talanoa Ako. We've been driving Pasifika achievement for our communities. Now this has all changed. I really think that's going to be this biggest change, adapting to the change.
With the condensed system of only having four achievement Standards now, it really means that it's not about the assessment. It's not about the final product. But we're looking at the whole process that leads up to the final product, eh? We're trying to make it more user-friendly. We're trying to make it more applicable to our learners, and trying to make... Suitable.
Yeah, suitable, and not make them feel that they're being assessed. But it's part of the learning process for them. The discussion around mātauranga Māori, about having that knowledge about self, about identity, and being open to everyone else is a crucial component for our Pasifika. It's really important that as Pacific, we also value our relationship with Mana whenua, with Tangata whenua.
We also have to try and filter that through, so the next generation can also value that in the terms of a Pacific lens, not a Westernised one. If we do not realise the people that are the basis of where we are, that's when we start to learn and value them as the host. If it wasn't for them, we would not be here.
It's very intense. We are here to do things for everyone else. We are not here for ourselves. We are representing our communities. It's quite a challenge, but I've loved every minute of it. Some of my colleagues think that it's real easy for us. As languages, Pacific languages. But I respond, it's easy, but it's also hard. Because you got to remember that there's diversity amongst us. Yes, we're from the same ocean, we have certain values and we share similar beliefs. But I'm always going to be forefront Samoan. You're always going to be Tongan.
'Avaiki nui is always going to be at your forefront. That's the difficulties that we have to navigate. So that's the hardest part, because you're going to think about everyone else. What would they want from this? From the online learning, to the small class, right to the bigger class, and right to a community full of Pasifika to a community with no Pasifika.
Sometimes I feel a little bit like the secret service. Because there's things that we talk about here that we can't share outside. We can't go back to school. I'm saying, when I go back to school, I'm going, man, we should be doing more. Just be prepared for changes I suppose, eh?
As part of the team we've tried to create Standards that are at the right level. Just to be open.
That even though, as you've mentioned, these course outlines are designed, it doesn't mean they have to follow them. They still have the element of creativity. They still have that element and the opportunity to think outside the box. Just be prepared for those changes. Changes are there, you just have to have an open mind, and continue to be that teacher that you are.
Creativity. You bring in whatever it is that you can do and do it to the best of your ability. Just remember, you're not the only one in the boat. Because there's much more. There's many of us there, and we can still work together. If there's anything you're stuck with, you call the next person. Because that is what we've been doing. We share, we network, and we work together. That's what has driven us, because you know you're not alone. It's about starting now. It's looking for that information now.
So you know what's coming, and prepare yourself the best way that you can do possible. The other part is informing others. So we're just going to do everything the same, and wait for it to come. But you actually need to prepare now. But, you know, be encouraged, eh?
Knowledge is power.
This subject is about developing the ability to communicate in Lea Faka-Tonga with other speakers of the language.
Learners will acquire the capacity to convey their ideas in new and dynamic ways and connect with the rich history, customs, and cultures of the communities in which Lea Faka-Tonga is spoken.
Through this subject, learners will also understand that each language has its own ways of expressing meaning, and that each has intrinsic value and special significance for its users. The whakataukī for this Learning Area reiterates this link to worth and identity:
Ko tōu reo, ko tōku reo, te tuakiri tangata. Tīhei uriuri, tīhei nakonako.
Your voice and my voice are expressions of identity. May our descendants live on and our hopes be fulfilled.
(Learning Languages Whakataukī, The New Zealand Curriculum, 2007)
Languages are inextricably linked to the social and cultural contexts in which they are used. Languages and cultures play a key role in developing national, group, and personal identities. As learners acquire the skills of communicative competence, they simultaneously reflect on their own personal identity and explore their own place in the world from a new perspective.
For learners of Tongan heritage in Aotearoa New Zealand and the wider Realm of New Zealand, using and advancing the knowledge of their language and culture enables them to affirm their sense of identity and belonging, and make connections to the wider community of speakers of the language. It allows them to maintain communication across the generations, which will contribute to the vitality of the language and help to ensure that the history, culture, and traditions of their community are retained. Learners without kinship ties will increase their knowledge and experience of a language that is spoken in community settings and in workplaces in many parts of Aotearoa New Zealand and the Realm of New Zealand. This learning will enable them to build intercultural understanding and closer relationships with people in these communities.
Big Ideas and Significant Learning
This section outlines the meaning of, and connection between, the Big Ideas and Significant Learning, which together form the Learning Matrix. It then explains each Learning Languages Big Idea.
The Learning Languages Learning Area curriculum, including its whakataukī, inform this subject's Significant Learning – learning that is critical for learners to know, understand, and do in a subject by the end of each Curriculum Level. This covers knowledge, skills, competencies, and attitudes. It also includes level-appropriate contexts learners should encounter in their education. The Learning Area's whakataukī is:
Ko tōu reo, ko tōku reo, te tuakiri tangata. Tīhei uriuri, tīhei nakonako
Your voice and my voice are expressions of identity. May our descendants live on and our hopes be fulfilled.
The subject's Big Ideas and Significant Learning are collated into a Learning Matrix for Curriculum Level 6, 7, and 8. Teachers can use the Learning Matrix as a tool to construct learning programmes that cover all the ‘not to be missed’ learning in a subject. There is no prescribed order to the Learning Matrix within each level. A programme of learning might begin with a context that is relevant to the local area of the school or an idea that learners are particularly interested in. This context or topic must relate to at least one Big Idea and may also link to other Big Ideas.
There are six Big Ideas in Learning Languages. The nature of this subject as a discipline means aspects of Significant Learning often cross over multiple Big Ideas, and vice versa.
Learning Lea Faka-Tonga allows learners to engage in effective communication within and across cultures. As they do so, they begin to expand their own world and open up new pathways and a range of possibilities for personal development.
The ability to communicate in a Pacific language is a rewarding experience. It makes it possible for learners to establish or affirm relationships with Pacific communities throughout Aotearoa New Zealand and in each language's homeland. It empowers them to engage more deeply with the cultures and values of those communities. They will be able to contribute actively and confidently to Pacific events at school, deepen their understanding of community practices, develop cross-Pacific connections, and support each other.
Proficiency in communication to meet a range of needs is the main goal of all language learning. While this draws from the knowledge of the linguistic building blocks of a language, the primary focus is communicative, not linguistic accuracy.
Ultimately, communication in more than one language is the future-focused prerequisite for intercultural understanding and global citizenship.
Languages create and represent meaning by employing unique systems of linguistic building blocks – be they oral features, vocabulary, grammar, syntax, register, or accompanying body language – that give rise to endless possibilities for expression and exchange. They are also repositories of the historical and cultural aspects of the language.
By engaging with these underlying frameworks, learners gain insight into how speakers adjust their language when negotiating meaning in different contexts and for different purposes, and how different types of text are organised. This helps them, over time, to communicate with greater clarity, creativity, and confidence.
Students who learn Lea Faka-Tonga also explore its unique linguistic workings by comparing and contrasting them with those of their other language(s). Like Te Reo Māori, Lea Faka-Tonga is a Polynesian language and shares many commonalities with other languages in that group, as well as clear points of divergence. Similarities in vocabulary and in the structure of possessives and personal pronouns are two such examples. English, while belonging to a very different language family, has also had historical impacts on Lea Faka-Tonga.
Language and culture continuously evolve together, influencing one another in the process. Language encodes culture and provides the means through which culture is shared and passed from one generation to the next – contributing to a sense of personal, community, and national identity.
Learning a language gives learners rich access to a culture because it enables them to communicate with the people who live it and allows them to explore the authentic spoken and written expressions of it. In that way, they gain an understanding of that culture which provides a strong foundation for intercultural respect and acceptance as well as an appreciation for the diversity that all cultures encompass.
For learners with a Pacific background in particular, learning a Pacific language empowers them to engage impactfully with the culture, values, and practices of their communities, move more confidently within them, and affirm their identity and belonging. This will enhance learners' confidence in their ability to do well in and outside of school and contribute to their communities.
Equally, learners gain an insight into how their own cultural lens and the cultural lenses of others shape perceptions and ways of doing things. This helps to deconstruct cultural stereotypes and moves language learners away from automatically defaulting to the dominant culture, while honouring tangata whenua and the multicultural nature of modern Aotearoa New Zealand, and welcoming the rich knowledge each individual brings to the learning environment.
"Another language opens up a whole new window on the world. It might be small and difficult to see through at first, but it gives you a different perspective, and it might make you realise that your first window could do with a bit of polishing and even enlarging." (Hone Tuwhare, Die deutsche Sprache und ich, NZCTE, Goethe-Institut, circa 1997)
As the quote above indicates, language and thought are intricately intertwined, and impact one another. Our language(s) can direct our thoughts and influence our perspectives without us always being aware of it. Therefore, engaging with another language gives us new metacognitive tools to think about languages as systems.
Learning more than one language allows learners to compare and contrast languages and ways of thinking across cultures, gaining a deeper insight into how languages convey ideas. This provides the opportunity to include te reo Māori, other Polynesian languages, and English as reference points in learning Lea Faka-Tonga. It enables learners to reflect on and improve those languages, and equips them with the tools necessary to navigate between them.
Furthermore, the ability to critically examine diverse cultural and personal points of view, which is facilitated by developing proficiency in more than one language, is an invaluable skill in our increasingly diverse and globally connected world.
It is important that the cultural and personal identities tied to Tongan be embraced. Learning Lea Faka-Tonga ensures that the language will be maintained and that future generations will stay connected with their heritage.
Learners of Lea Faka-Tonga will engage with factors, events, and circumstances impacting on the sustainability of the language. They will explore ways in which they can contribute to its ongoing vitality for the good of the communities that speak it and their own wellbeing. This will strengthen their confidence in that they can contribute to the Tongan community even at a young age, promoting social cohesion and participation, and resulting in significant wider social and socioeconomic benefits for individuals, Tongan communities, and Aotearoa New Zealand society in general.
Acquiring additional linguistic skills in Lea Faka-Tonga, much like learning to play an instrument, is a process that requires regular commitment, practice, and repetition. It fosters perseverance and allows learners to take ownership of their own learning, as well as connecting with and contributing to the communities in which the language is spoken.
Language learning also builds resilience because learners continually negotiate situations with emerging communicative competence and take the risk of being misunderstood. This encourages them to reframe 'mistakes' as rich opportunities for learning and development. It will give them the confidence to seek out opportunities to use Lea Faka-Tonga outside of the classroom.
As this Big Idea focuses on awareness of the hidden processes of language acquisition, it also refers to the ways in which learners gain insight into the strategies they can employ to progress their linguistic development. This can include pattern recognition, trial and error, techniques to memorise vocabulary, and effective use of tools such as dictionaries. Learners are encouraged to find modes of learning that work best for them and to begin thinking like a linguist.
Key Competencies in Lea Faka-Tonga
Learning a language is inherently about developing and fine-tuning linguistic skills and extending the ability to relate to and interact appropriately with others in more than one cultural setting. The language learning process itself requires learners to manage self, to participate, and to contribute. The new ways of thinking about the world they will be exposed to will encourage them to think about their place in it and how they can use those skills to participate in and contribute to their communities and the wider world.
Thinking
Learners in Lea Faka-Tonga will:
- deduce rules, recognise patterns, and use their problem-solving abilities to make meaning with an imperfect set of linguistic skills
- evaluate and choose from a range of vocabulary, structures, and communicative strategies, including culturally appropriate ways of using language and body language, to engage with different audiences, sometimes having to think on their feet to improvise and adapt for different contexts and purposes
- explore and reflect on the many ways language, culture, and thinking influence each other
- compare language(s), culture(s), and ways of thinking, and critically reflect on their assumptions and identities in a way that fosters cultural belonging, intercultural understanding, and global citizenship.
Using Language, Symbols, and Texts
This competency is at the core of language learning; learners in Lea Faka-Tonga will:
- develop increased proficiency in using language, symbols, and texts effectively to communicate information, opinions, and ideas, not just in the language they are learning, but also in the other language(s) they speak
- recognise how choices of language, symbols, or text work together and affect people’s understanding of and responses to communications, and how they work together differently in different languages
- think about the type of language which is appropriate to use in a range of different contexts and formats and for different purposes and audiences
- expand their ability to express themselves in increasingly independent and imaginative ways, and improvise and adapt in a range of communicative situations.
Relating to Others
As communication and understanding are prerequisites of relating to others and the very essence of what language learning is about, learners in Lea Faka-Tonga will:
- hone their listening skills, recognise different points of view, negotiate, and share ideas
- explore how language, culture, and identity are interrelated and thereby develop the ability to relate to people from their own culture, but also to people from other cultures, with more empathy and insight
- develop an appreciation of their own diverse backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives in the wider world and in a multicultural Aotearoa New Zealand
- experience how a curious, open-minded, and respectful engagement with the values, traditions, beliefs, and practices of a culture can lead to insights into their own identity and offer opportunities for self-development.
Managing Self
Because learning an additional language requires ongoing commitment and does not lend itself to 'cramming', learners in Lea Faka-Tonga will:
- be encouraged to take ownership of their own learning process and find ways of learning and practising which work for them
- use their understanding of how language acquisition works, eg, lots of input, lots of output practice, making mistakes as part of the process and recognising this as part of the process for learning and development, actively engage in the practise necessary to make steady progress
- build on their own strengths and address their own identified learning needs, and set and meet their own learning goals
- be involved in reporting processes
- participate actively and responsibly in group activities.
Participating and Contributing
Learners in Lea Faka-Tonga will:
- be encouraged to take risks, learn from mistakes, and take responsibility for initiating and maintaining communication – through this they will gain confidence to participate and contribute in and outside of the classroom with the skills they have
- mature as local and global citizens by getting to know and engaging with the world views and needs of Pacific communities
- recognise the interconnected nature of societies and communities in the world and Aotearoa New Zealand, and be encouraged to think of their place in and responsibility to them.
This section of The New Zealand Curriculum Online offers specific guidance to school leaders and teachers on integrating the Key Competencies into the daily activities of the school and its Teaching and Learning Programmes.
Introduction to Sample Course Outlines
Sample Course Outlines are being produced to help teachers and schools understand the new NCEA Learning and Assessment Matrices. Examples of how a year-long teaching and learning course could be constructed using the new Learning Matrix and Achievement Standards are provided here. They are indicative only and do not mandate any particular context or approach.
More detailed sample Teaching and Learning Programmes will be developed during piloting.
Assessment Matrix
Conditions of Assessment for internally assessed standards
This section provides guidelines for assessment against internally assessed Standards. Guidance is provided on:
- appropriate ways of, and conditions for, gathering evidence
- ensuring that evidence is authentic
- any other relevant advice specific to an Achievement Standard.
NB: Information on additional generic guidance on assessment practice in schools is published on the NZQA website. It would be useful to read in conjunction with these Conditions of Assessment.
The school's Assessment Policy and Conditions of Assessment must be consistent with the Assessment Rules for Schools With Consent to Assess. These rules will be updated during the NCEA review. This link includes guidance for managing internal moderation and the collection of evidence.
For all Achievement Standards
Internal assessment provides considerable flexibility in the collection of evidence. Evidence can be collected in different ways to suit a range of teaching and learning styles, and a range of contexts. Care needs to be taken to offer students opportunities to present their best evidence against the Standard(s) that are free from unnecessary constraints.
It is recommended that the design of assessment reflects and reinforces the ways students have been learning. Collection of evidence for the internally assessed Standards could include, but is not restricted to, an extended task, an investigation, digital evidence (such as recorded interviews, blogs, photographs, or film), or a portfolio of evidence.
It is also recommended that the collection of evidence for internally assessed Standards should not use the same method that is used for any external Standards in a course, particularly if that method is using a time-bound written examination. This could unfairly disadvantage students who do not perform well under these conditions.
A separate assessment event is not needed for each Standard. Often assessment can be integrated into one activity that collects evidence towards two or three different Standards from a programme of learning. Evidence can also be collected over time from a range of linked activities (for example, in a portfolio). This approach can also ease the assessment workload for both students and teachers.
Effective assessment should suit the nature of the learning being assessed, provide opportunities to meet the diverse needs of all students, and be valid and fair.
Authenticity of student evidence needs to be assured regardless of the method of collecting evidence. This needs to be in line with school policy. For example: an investigation carried out over several sessions could include teacher observations or the use of milestones such as a meeting with the student, a journal, or photographic entries recording progress etc.
The evidence for this Achievement Standard will be a minimum of two student-generated pieces. One piece must be a spoken interaction, the second piece may be spoken or written. Teachers who have students who require special dispensation from the requirement for a compulsory spoken interaction may contact NZQA for permission to do so.
The overall individual contribution of each student to the interactions must be:
- 2-3 minutes for spoken evidence only
or
- approximately 1.5 minutes spoken and 150 words written evidence.
The inclusion of written evidence will be trialled with only the European and Pacific languages during the pilot year (due to the immediacy of the required interaction and the fact that the writing systems involved are the same as for English.) This decision will be reviewed at the end of the pilot once we have sufficient evidence to judge the feasibility and credibility of the innovation.
The interactions must take place in real time and show that the student can respond immediately using Tongan, whether in spoken or written form.
- Any spoken language submitted as evidence must be video recorded. The student must be easily identifiable and clearly audible in the video recording.
- Any written interaction submitted as evidence must be witnessed by a teacher as it happens. Students should then submit a hard or digital copy of the interaction.
Students may not:
- script or rehearse the assessment interactions
- copy or paste materials into any written evidence
- use any notes, resources, or dictionaries during their interactions
- use the predictive text function on any device during written interactions
- discuss the same topic more than once across their evidence.
Assessment Activities which allow the presentation of entirely rote-learned exchanges or scripted role plays would not meet the requirements of the Achievement Standard.
If working in a group of more than two people, it is essential that each learner ensures they contribute enough appropriate language to meet the Standard.
Teachers should ensure the outcome is appropriate for Level 6 of the New Zealand Curriculum.
The evidence for this Achievement Standard will be one student-generated piece related to a cultural context which may be presented in spoken or written Tongan, or a mixture of the two.
The total amount of evidence should be:
- about 300 written words, or
- approximately 1.5 minutes of spoken evidence, or
- an equivalent combination of both.
Students should:
- produce work that is their own
- record their evidence for authenticity purposes.
In the preparation of the assessment activity, students may use:
- reference materials such as class notes
- textbooks
- dictionaries.
Students should not:
- copy whole sentences or passages from any source without significant modification
- use online or digital translators of any kind
- have anyone else point out errors, edit, or correct their work before handing it in for assessment
- be assessed on the technical quality of their presentation or design, only the quality of the language will be assessed.
Students may submit evidence which involves one or more other people, but students are assessed individually.
Evidence may be presented by the student in a range of forms, for example:
- a game or quiz
- an infographic or slideshow (with or without voiceover)
- a digital or paper-based scrapbook
- a video recording.
Teachers should ensure the outcome is appropriate for Level 6 of the New Zealand Curriculum.