The Modern Languages Teachers Association of New South Wales (MLTA NSW) would like to invite you to attend their annual conference Building capacity - creativity and collaboration in Languages Education, which will be held at Southern Cross Catholic Vocational College, 17 Comer St Burwood, NSW on Friday 17 March.

The guest speaker will be Dr Ken Cruickshank who will share some of his recent research and address the question “What makes for a successful languages program?”. Current Languages practitioners will present a series of workshops and you will be updated on developments in Languages in NSW and at the national level. There will also be an opportunity to share ideas to enrich our practice as languages teachers.

If you would like to actively participate in the conference, please consider preparing a 2 to 7 minutes presentation for a TeachMeet-style session in the afternoon. It can be anything from an idea you have adapted from someone else, a summary of an interesting and/or relevant article, a strategy or game you have used with success with your students, or any original idea you have tried.

Please contact Kati Varela to express your interest.

For further details about the conference and to register, please see the attached flyer.
Online registration link: https://goo.gl/forms/p89FOU95QYfgJtXr2
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NSW Education Standards Authority (NESA, formerly BOSTES) will review all school-based assessment requirements for all Stage 6 Board Developed Courses, excluding VET, Life Skills, and Content Endorsed Courses, to align with the requirements for new English, Mathematics, Science and History Stage 6 syllabuses.

During 2017, current school-based assessment components and weightings will be amended to reflect the Stronger HSC Standards reforms for assessment including:

• - mandated components and weightings for Year 11 and Year 12
• - a maximum of three formal assessment tasks in Year 11 and four formal assessment tasks in Year 12.


• Further information about the proposed amendments and opportunities to provide feedback will be available soon. Revised school-based assessment components and weightings and sample assessment schedules for Year 11 and Year 12 will be published in July for implementation with Year 11 in 2018 and Year 12 in 2019.

​For more information about the HSC reforms, read about the Stronger HSC Standards http://educationstandards.nsw.edu.au/wps/portal/nesa/about/initiatives/stronger-hsc-standards. 
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For curriculum and school-based assessment enquiries, please visit http://www.boardofstudies.nsw.edu.au/contact/curriculum.html

​For more information, contact:
Lauren Wood
NSW Education Standards Authority
Senior Education Officer, Assessment
(02) 9367 8034

Are you an early career or geographically isolated teacher of languages? Then the Virtual Languages Mentoring Network (VLMN) is for you!

The VLMN aims to provide support and professional learning opportunities for teachers. If you are interested in the program, please refer to the original post, or contact Michelle Walls for more information. 

EOIs for mentees and mentors close this Friday, 24 February. 

Due to a high level of demand, requests for the resources advertised earlier this month are still being processed and cannot be answered individually.

Please note that priority will be given to requests from Department of Education schools. 

Please contact Michelle Walls if you have any questions.

​Port Hacking High School (Miranda) is looking for a Japanese/French teacher to work on Thursdays and Fridays in Terms 1 and 2 in a dynamic Languages faculty. The load is mainly Japanese with 3 hours/fortnight of French. Classes include Year 7 Japanese, Year 8 Japanese, Year 8 French, Year 9 Japanese as well as sport. Port Hacking High School is a comprehensive high school with an excellent reputation in the Sutherland Shire. For further enquiries and to apply please email Belinda Munro-Laylim. 

​up2now is a tool developed by NESA, which allows high school students to create an online portfolio of their academic and extra-curricular achievements. It also enables students to export their portfolio to social media (including LinkedIn), adapt it into a CV, print a hardcopy, and share with third parties such as their peers, teachers, universities, and prospective employers.

As all language teachers know, a sense of progress and achievement supports motivation to continue language study; to this end the tool has been enhanced to make it easier for languages students to showcase their skills and participation in languages.

User guides for both languages teachers and students are available here for download. They provide step-by-step instructions on how to get started on the up2now website and how to make the most out of the latest language-specific enhancements.

If you would like more information about the up2now tool and how it might be used in your school context, visit the homepage at http://up2now.net.au.

To provide more flexibility in the development of exams, minor amendments to the exam specifications for Stage 6 Languages Continuers: Section I – Listening and Responding have been made in the following courses:

• - Arabic
• - Chinese
• - French
• - German
• - Indonesian
• - Italian
• - Japanese
• - Korean
• - Modern Greek
• - Spanish.

 
The following amended exam specifications will be implemented from the 2017 HSC exams:

• - maximum text length has been increased from approximately 60 seconds to approximately 80 seconds
• - exams will have approximately nine items instead of approximately 10 items.

 
The revised specifications are in the Stage 6 Continuers Languages Assessment and Reporting document and available to download via the HSC syllabus page.
 
For more information, contact:
Lyn Sully 
Inspector, Languages 
lyn.sully@nesa.nsw.edu.au

Minor amendments have been made to the exam rubrics for Stage 6 Languages Extension: Section II – Writing in the following courses:

• - Arabic
• - Chinese
• - French
• - German
• - Indonesian
• - Italian
• - Japanese
• - Modern Greek
• - Spanish.

 
The following amendments to the rubrics will be effective for 2017 HSC exams:

• - ‘present and explain or justify a point of view’ has been changed to ‘present and justify a point of view’ to improve clarity
• - ‘write text appropriate to context and/or purpose and/or audience’ has been changed to ‘write text appropriate to audience, purpose and context’ to more closely align with the intention and wording of the exam specifications.

 
​The revised exam rubrics can be downloaded from the HSC syllabus page for each of the Stage 6 Languages Extension courses. 
 
For more information, contact:
Tracey McIntosh 
Manager, Examining and Testing 
tracey.mcintosh@nesa.nsw.edu.au
(02) 9367 8233