2013 Notes from the Marking Centre – Indonesian Beginners
Introduction
This document has been produced for the teachers and candidates of the Stage 6 Indonesian Beginners course. It contains comments on candidate responses to the 2013 Higher School Certificate examination, indicating the quality of the responses and highlighting their relative strengths and weaknesses.
This document should be read along with:
- the Indonesian Beginners Stage 6 Syllabus
- the 2013 Higher School Certificate Indonesian Beginners examination
- the marking guidelines
- Advice for students attempting HSC languages examinations, and HSC Languages oral examinations – advice to students
- Advice to HSC students about examinations
- other support documents developed by the Board of Studies, Teaching and Educational Standards NSW to assist in the teaching and learning of Indonesian in Stage 6.
Oral examination
Characteristics of better responses:
- demonstrated a wide variety of language structures
- expanded answers which included personal opinions and comments
- use of conjunctions allowed for a more logical connection of ideas
- manipulated question forms
- controlled language forms and word order.
Characteristics of weaker responses:
- basic sentence structure
- rehearsed sentences with no direct connection to the specific question asked
- lack of understanding for some question words and/or phrasing
- little use of negative constructions, comparisons or a wide range of adjectives.
Written examination
Section I – Listening
Characteristics of better responses:
- synthesis of ideas to arrive at conclusions required in the questions with justifications from the text
- logical and succinct response within the available lines
- optimised use of the ‘Candidate’s Notes’, successfully transferring these to answers, particularly in the multiple-choice questions
- unfamiliar vocabulary cross-checked in the dictionary and included/added to answers
- a sound understanding of phonetics in order to spell unfamiliar vocabulary.
Characteristics of weaker responses:
- general understanding of questions but lacked supporting detail required for higher marks in questions worth 3, 4 or 5 marks
- incorrect information or attributes ascribed to each person in conversations involving reference to a third person
- inaccurate combination of qualifiers and nouns
- lack of evidence from the text to justify answers
- did not use ‘Candidate’s Notes’ section effectively.
Section II – Reading
Characteristics of better responses:
- demonstrated understanding of the texts rather than just identifying and translating pieces of information
- applied the most appropriate definition of words from a dictionary, for example mendaftarkan is ‘to register’ and ‘to list’, but in this context the former was more appropriate
- responses in English made sense and were relevant to the question being asked
- used the number of lines in the space provided to synthesise complete and full responses
- identified familiar base words that may have been used with an unfamiliar affix, for example terpilih.
Characteristics of weaker responses:
- lack of evidence of dictionary use for words such as pidato, puisi, seni, ejaan, pertukaran siswa
- quotes in Indonesian taken directly from the texts without an explanation/translation in English as to their significance
- lack of recognition of anglicisations of Indonesian words: tim, kelas, komite, posisi, promosi, lokasi, alergi; these were sometimes key words
- found the me-verb forms often very challenging to read and identify the base words, for example menerima, menjelaskan, memberikan.
Section III – Writing in Indonesian
Characteristics of better responses:
- text type specified and addressed and original and creative ideas developed based on the context provided in the questions
- evidence of planning and use of connectives, opinions and more sophisticated structures
- detailed instructions for caring for a pet, included interesting comments about the pets and their likes. Good use of prepositions (Q.17)
- personalised responses containing emotive language and explanations for their feelings, using exclamation and comments to add creativity (Q.18)
- sustained texts which logically developed creative ideas (Q.19 and Q.20) including some intercultural insights (Q.20).
Characteristics of weaker responses:
- specified text type not addressed
- simplistic short sentence structure with little variation
- a limited knowledge of the role of affixation in Indonesian grammar
- difficulty expressing instructions or requests (Q.17)
- lack of an explanation of reasons for emotions (Q.18)
- lack of planning and logical sequencing of ideas.
NSW Government