Assessing the Foreign Language Proficiency of High School Students in New Zealand: From the Traditional to the Innovative

Abstract

A revised schoolwide curriculum for New Zealand was implemented in 2010. This new curriculum has placed a new and strong emphasis on foreign language (L2) learning and has precipitated a reevaluation of high-stakes assessment practices to ensure that senior school assessments will be aligned to new curriculum requirements. The reevaluation has led to proposed changes to the ways in which students' L2 proficiency will be assessed. This article traces the history of L2 assessment in New Zealand from the early 1990s to 2010. It describes several changes in assessment practices that have occurred during this time; documents the assessment-curriculum alignment project (the SCALEs project), which led to the blueprints from which new L2 assessments are being developed; and outlines the next steps in the revision process.

Notes

¹In New Zealand an L2 is customarily referred to as an “additional language,” which is any language offered in the school curriculum other than the language of instruction (most commonly English, but Māori in some contexts). English and Māori may also be additional languages. Other additional languages include international languages (e.g., French, Chinese), Pasifika languages (Samoan and Cook Islands Māori), Latin, and New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL). In this article we focus principally on the international languages (more commonly referred to outside New Zealand as foreign languages) but use the acronym L2 so as to include the Pasifika languages where appropriate (Latin is subject to different types of assessment even though it was part of the project we describe, and neither Māori nor NZSL were part of the project).