NESA announced today that outstanding eligibility determinations for Year 11 and 12 Languages students are due by 12 March 2021.
You can find resources to help principals make determinations on their website, including:
- case studies
- eligibility criteria
- forms. 

The Languages and Culture team is offering an online planning day for teachers from NSW public schools to facilitate programming for Stage 6 Beginners languages course. The day will offer the opportunity to network/collaborate/program with experienced teachers of Stage 6 Beginners courses, who will also share their sample programming ideas and approaches. We also explore HSC monitoring, resources and assessment.

The date for the planning day is Wednesday 24 February 2021. If you would like to attend, please complete the short application survey by Wednesday 17 February 2021.
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Priority will be given to teachers who are teaching a Beginners course in 2021. Places are limited.
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Please email Coreena Allen if you need further information.

This registered course builds teachers’ capacity to understand and apply mandatory Stage 6 school-based assessment. It unpacks NESA’s current school-based assessment requirements, gives guidance in developing interrelated and interdependent tasks and supports teachers in developing their own non-HSC style assessment tasks.

​This course enables participants to:
- understand the requirements of school-based assessment in Stage 6
- implement a range of assessment strategies in Stage 6
- design an effective assessment task for Stage 6.
 
The course can be completed at your own pace and support is available if needed.
The course is available in MyPL via code RG10281 – Stage 6 school-based assessment in languages.
 
For further support or information please contact Coreena Allen or Marcela Ayas.

We have repurposed the content from the old HSC Online site to create 3 new Google sites to support the [Language] in Context courses (formerly Heritage). Access the sites from the appropriate sections of our website:

• Chinese in Context
• Japanese in Context
• Korean in Context.

Due to furigana in Japanese, we had to upload content for Japanese as PDFs.
We hope you and your students find these resources helpful.

The Languages and Culture team has developed videos with advice to students on how to approach the HSC Beginners and Continuers examinations. You can find the videos in the HSC hub, along with downloadable guides with advice for Beginners, Continuers, Extension, [Language] and Literature and [Language] in Context students. 
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The department's HSC hub contains high-quality, on-demand resources that teachers can provide to their students to help them prepare for their exams. Aligned to NSW syllabuses, the hub is a carefully curated central repository for items created by the NSW Department of Education, including Aurora College and WooTube. There is also third party material available. For copyright reasons, some items will require a NSW Department of Education log in. 

We are circulating this information on behalf of our colleagues at NESA, who have received a number of inquiries this year regarding Languages Life Skills courses in Stage 6.
· Schools with eligible students can develop a School Developed Board Endorsed Course for a Stage 6 Life Skills course in any language.
· Applications for these courses are submitted to NESA via Schools Online. Applications should be submitted by the end of Term 1 in the year before the course is planned to commence.
· Objectives, outcomes and modules are pre-filled in the application form. Schools determine the topics they will deliver (in relation to the modules provided), and the content that will be taught in each topic (suggested content is provided in supporting documentation attached to the application form).
· The objectives and outcomes within the application are based on the Stage 6 Beginners Languages courses.
· Once endorsed, the course can be delivered by the school and count as 2 units towards a student’s pattern of study.
Further inquiries from schools can be directed to Marina Laing or Melissa Gould-Drakeley.

With preparations for the HSC underway for Stage 6 students here is a reminder of the resources available in the Stage 6 languages section of the Department of Education's website to support our language students.

1. Listening and reading resources (adapted from the old HSC Online website) are available for most Beginners and Continuers courses. Navigate to your language and scroll down to sample listening and reading activities for the link. Questions, audio, sample responses and transcripts can be found here.
2. Sample speaking questions can be found under most Beginners and Continuers courses by scrolling to the practice speaking questions link.
​3. Advice for students in approaching the Beginners/Continuers/Extension HSC examinations – these can be found by navigating to your language, and the course from our Stage 6 curriculum page, under the heading Advice for students.

And don't forget to also check the Stage 6 teacher-contributed resources in our statewide staffroom in Yammer (staff only), including NSW School of Languages' guide to best practice for speaking lessons and the Languages and Culture teams' preparing students for the oral examinations in Beginners and Continuers advice.

NESA has updated all Stage 6 course descriptions – they are now available on the NESA website.
 
Course descriptions are helpful for students making subject selections.