2015 Notes from the Marking Centre – Spanish Beginners
Introduction
This document has been produced for the teachers and candidates of the Stage 6 Spanish Beginners course. It contains comments on candidate responses to the 2015 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 Spanish Beginners Stage 6 Syllabus
- the 2015 Higher School Certificate Spanish Beginners examination
- the marking guidelines
- Advice for students attempting HSC languages examinations, and HSC Languages oral examinations – advice to students
- Advice for 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 Spanish in Stage 6.
Oral examination
Characteristics of better responses:
- candidates conversed effectively by exchanging relevant information, opinions and comments
- a variety of vocabulary was used
- more complex grammatical structures and varied tenses were attempted with only minor errors
- connectives (eg además, todavía, pués, entonces, pero, aunque) and a range of adjectives were used, which added interest and flow to the conversation.
Characteristics of weaker responses:
- candidates did not provide meaningful responses
- short utterances were produced to answer factual questions, without giving any additional details
- candidates used infinitives and did not manipulate verbs into a variety of tenses
- significant errors with verb endings, tenses, and number/gender agreements were made.
Section I – Listening and Responding
Characteristics of better responses:
- the required information was identified rather than providing an entire translation of the text
- responses were supported with evidence from the texts where appropriate
- a clear explanation was provided (Q9).
Characteristics of weaker responses:
- isolated details were provided without addressing the questions
- assumptions were used to answer questions; for example, candidates assumed that the person was on the train (Q1)
- candidates lacked common vocabulary knowledge such as the word ‘rain’ and other elements of weather (Q7)
- candidates did not provide a summary (Q5).
Section II – Reading
Characteristics of better responses:
- a global comprehension of texts was displayed
- the required information was identified rather than providing an entire translation of the text
- the qualifiers were considered when responding, for example, finding ‘unusual’ accommodation rather than just finding accommodation, and translating in seconds rather than just translating
- candidates assessed the usefulness of a piece of advice in relation to a person’s needs (Q13b)
- candidates compared the profiles (Q14c)
- responses were supported with evidence from the texts where appropriate.
Characteristics of weaker responses:
- only part of the text rather than the whole text was considered
- isolated words or unrelated ideas were provided
- the same information was used to answer two different parts of the same question
- an elementary understanding of the text (Q13) and a poor understanding of vocabulary in context (Q11) was demonstrated.
Section III – Writing in Spanish
Characteristics of better responses:
- requirements of the tasks were addressed
- planning of responses was evident
- grammatical structures were manipulated accurately
- ideas were sequenced logically, giving appropriate flow to texts.
Characteristics of weaker responses:
- grammatical structures were poorly manipulated with significant inaccuracies, such as verb agreements, tenses, and gender/number agreements
- writing lacked coherence and sentences were often incomplete.
NSW Government