As all New Zealand students know, the NCEA is not something to trifle with. It is pretty challenging because you need to complete various complex achievement standards while dealing with several school subjects at the same time.
What makes NCEA level 1 even more difficult for students is that it's their first NCEA year when they only discover how the system of standards works and how they should prepare for one standard or another.
At the same, the NCEA is crucial for students' future education. One of the prerequisites to get University Entrance and apply for higher education is the NCEA level 3.
What's more, the quality of your NCEA credits can be taken into account by the institution you want to study at. If a lot of your credits have been endorsed with Merit or Excellence, your chance of getting in will significantly increase.
Learn how to pass NCEA level 1 Maori in our article.
So, when a student starts year 11, they should consider starting their revision as early as possible to have enough time to prepare for each standard.
To make their preparation more efficient, it can be useful to look at the achievement standards they will need to deal with in more detail, so they get a clear understanding of which skills to improve.
In this article, we will focus on the NCEA assignments in Maori. As te reo Maori is an inspiring subject that helps us discover New Zealand culture and history more deeply, a lot of students take it in high school to gain the necessary credits.
What a student needs to understand from the start is that Maori is not a science, so its achievement standards will be likely to require creativity and imagination. That can make your Maori course very inspiring given that you go about it the right way.
Let's have a look at the skills that school students are meant to acquire in Maori for the NCEA.
Understanding and speaking Maori
The final objective of learning any language is, of course, the ability to understand and express yourself in that language, both in written and spoken form. The NCEA Maori achievement standards were created by the New Zealand Ministry of Education with that goal in mind.
First of all, to speak any language, students need to master its pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary. You will need the first one to pronounce words correctly. The second will help you see through the structure of Maori. Finally, the third is just about learning many words to build your sentences with.
Learn why NCEA level 1 Maori is important in more detail in our article.
If learning Maori was just that, it would be similar to a maths or science course and a lot of students would find it a little bit boring. However, that is not the case.
An essential activity for the achievement of a good level of Maori skills is actual speaking, listening, reading and writing. That means that you can have plenty of fun in your course, learn new things and share your own thoughts and ideas with other people.
It is those skills that will be tested in NCEA standards by your school teachers and external examiners. If you want to get a good number of credits at Excellence, all you need is to train your language skills, whether through assignments or simple practice with friends, relatives and other students.
Let's now have a look at the most common types of tasks a student may be assigned in a Maori assessment exam. That will help you get a better idea of what you should prepare yourself for and maybe even serve as an example of exercises you could do to improve your level.
Internal NCEA standards
As most high school students in New Zealand probably know, there are two main types of standards that they are to complete during the year. These are internal and external standards.
As their very names indicate, the first are organised by students' schools and are often evaluated by their immediate teachers whereas the second are usually submitted in written form and marked outside the student's school.
First of all, we will have a look at the kinds of Maori assignments that students may expect to be given as an internal achievement standard. They tend to be less stressful than external ones because taken in a familiar environment but are as important.
You can prepare for an internal standard with your school Maori teacher and complete it at Merit or even Excellence to improve your future education opportunities.
Listening and speaking
As internal standards are usually set in students' schools, that makes it possible to test their spoken Maori skills, including understanding and expression.
These are the most important abilities from a practical point of view because students can use them in their daily lives to talk to people, listen to the radio and podcasts or watch TV after school. At the same time, improving them can take a lot of time because they require practice.
You can read more about using NCEA Maori past papers in our article.
Maori school teachers are supposed to organise class activities to help their students but that time may not be enough to become fluent in te reo. If you want to be sure to succeed in your education and meet each NCEA level 1 standard, you should probably dedicate some additional time to listening and, if possible, speaking every day.
Maori understanding
The main Maori listening standard consists of two texts that are read by the teacher in front of the class. The students need then to answer a number of questions set by the Ministry of Education or the teacher themselves that will test their understanding of what they have heard.
The first text can be a short story, it is read several times at different speeds in order for the students to note down the important details in Maori or English. Depending on the number of correct answers, they can complete the achievement standard with a Merit or Excellence endorsement.
The second text is usually meant to test a different kind of skill than the second one. For example, it can be a description of a town. The student will need to follow the directions and indicate the described places on a map.
Maori oral expression
Speaking is another crucial skill that Maori language students should master at NCEA level 1. To test that ability, they will be given a test in which they will need to express themselves on a subject or two that they can choose from the list of topics that will be offered to them.
To get their credits for that standard, they will need to speak for over 3 minutes and communicate ideas relevant to the topics. If their speech is fluent and they make few or no mistakes while using Maori level 6 grammatical structure and vocabulary, their credits will be endorsed with Merit or Excellence.
Writing skills
A good level of written expression is very important for students because they will need that skill for the achievement of their external standards. The internal written assessment test can be a great opportunity to get more written practice.
Similarly to the spoken Maori test, they will be offered a number of topics and types of texts which they will write during the year. The attribution of the credits and endorsements will depend on the number of mistakes and the quality of the texts.
NCEA external assessment standards
Unlike internal standards that are taken by students in their schools and marked by their teachers, external exams will be sent for evaluation to NZQA, an organisation attached to the Ministry of Education. Logically, each external exam needs to be taken in written form.
Their objective is to test the students' understanding of te reo, their cultural knowledge as well as their ability to write in the language. They should be very serious about those skills during their education in New Zealand because they are crucial for getting the NCEA and University Entrance later on.
Here are the two main types of assessment standards, the high school student will need to complete.
Understanding a written text
The first type of NCEA level 1 Maori standard consists of working with a text. The student will need to understand its meaning and answer a number of questions that will show how deeply they have grasped the meaning.
Find out more about the NCEA Maori syllabus in our article.
With the text, students will be given a list of the difficult words that are not part of the NCEA level 1 curriculum and they can write their answers either in Maori or in English.
Written expression
The second type of NCEA standard is written expression. In that exam, high school students will be asked to write a text in te reo only. The exam will test their argumentation skills as well as their knowledge of Maori culture.
Most schools in New Zealand pay a lot of attention to writing but if that is not enough, students can also practise writing on their own to deliver a truly good text in their final exam.
If a student works seriously during the school year and follows their teachers' recommendations, they should not have difficulty getting their NCEA credits. In the opposite case, they can always contact a private Maori tutor and take personalised lessons with them.
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