You will continue to deliver your planned teaching and learning programs to students in Stage 6, with clear lesson goals and instructions. Consider how you will support your students with speaking skills, for example, regular phone calls, Adobe Connect sessions or Microsoft Teams.

It may be challenging to gauge where students are up to or how they are feeling, without your daily face-to-face support, so your professional judgement and intuition will play an important role in how you design your lessons and support your students.

Teachers 7-12 in NSW public schools are able to access support at any time through our Languages NSW (7-12) virtual staffroom on Yammer, which you access through the portal. You can post questions (anonymously or under your own name) and share resources in a collaborative and supportive online community with over 350 members.

Beginners/Continuers

Past HSC papers can be accessed from the NESA website.

If technology is not available, students can be sent written work, including writing tasks, reading comprehensions and activities which focus on vocabulary building and key grammatical structures.

Year 11 students could be assigned a language-based project with clear guidelines, expectations and outcomes.

Year 12 students should continue working on all 4 macro skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing skills. As a skills-based course, practice is the key to success.

The oral examinations are in August or September (depending on course and language), so practising speaking skills should be a priority.

Work on sustaining communication addressing different topics with depth and breadth. For each topic, students could create a mind map with key vocabulary and structures. Once the mind map is complete with very specific and detailed language, students could prepare a 1-2 minute speech or participate in a conversation with you, over the phone or through Adobe Connect, Google Hangouts or Skype. Students could listen to each other's conversations or speeches, building vocabulary across a range of topics and noting down unfamiliar vocabulary.

To keep accountability high, consider pairing your students up for short, regular phone calls in the target language, 2-3 times each week. You can provide topic-based questions to keep them on track and engaged.

For Beginners students, refer them to the following links to practise topic-based, HSC-style speaking questions, listening items and reading activities:

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

To support Continuers students in building skills in speaking, listening, reading and text types, access the following links:

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

To support Continuers students, refer to advice for students (DOCX 85KB) for more detailed information for students on preparing for the HSC.

Extension

Past HSC papers can be accessed from the NESA website.

The support materials for each Extension course contain a range of ideas and strategies which could be adapted for virtual or online learning:

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

Students should be preparing for the monologue, with the oral examination in August or September (depending on the language).

The Languages NSW - Stage 6 Extension group on Yammer contains a comprehensive range of resources for you to access, including past HSC questions categorised by prescribed issue. These questions could be adapted for speaking or writing.

To support student understanding of the prescribed issues, ask students to do their own research. Provide students with a topic of investigation to research, analyse, challenge existing ideas, summarise and then either present or write on their conclusions.

To support student understanding of the prescribed text, ask students to unpack the extracts (or chapters) by looking at character development, film techniques and the significance of the extract, noting key quotations.

Refer to advice for students (DOCX 94KB) for more detailed information for students on preparing for the HSC examination.