Polish Continuers 2018 HSC exam pack (archive)

Conversation

Students should:

• be prepared to talk about a variety of topics relating to their personal world
• answer the question asked and not just memorise responses on topics and recite them irrespective of the question
• express their ideas and opinions and justify their point of view
• manipulate the language to fulfil the requirements of the question
• avoid repetition of the same vocabulary, phrases and expressions.

In better responses, students were able to:

• give extended responses and appropriate details to answer the question
• respond to questions using a variety of vocabulary, sentence structures and grammar
• offer opinions and support their points of view by describing, explaining and justifying
• respond in the tense required by the question
• respond in a fluent and confident manner, and provide relevant information when answering the examiner’s questions.

Areas for students to improve include:

• using appropriate adjectives in relation to the topic of conversation
• positioning of adjectives in relation to nouns, that is, placing correct adjectives before or after the noun
• using third person when addressing adults and teachers.

Discussion

Students should:

• identify texts by title and author
• choose a topic that has good quality sources available
• prepare for the discussion by researching at least three texts
• ensure that one of the texts is a literary source
• demonstrate evidence of their research into their topic and the texts that they sourced
• express and justify opinions and points of view on the in-depth study topic
• apply research findings to support their conclusions
• refer to their texts to analyse, evaluate and reflect on their topic.

In better responses, students were able to:

• use vocabulary suitable to the topic
• give details of topic and align knowledge obtained to research of sources
• identify the sources used in the research of the in-depth topic
• refer to at least three texts, one of which was a literary text
• present a point of view and support it with evidence from the texts
• demonstrate a link between research and conclusions drawn
• respond appropriately to the questions asked
• compare and contrast information and ideas presented in texts
• synthesise information researched and use it to support their point of view
• demonstrate a high level of grammatical accuracy and use a variety of vocabulary and sentence structures.

Areas for students to improve include avoiding:

• generalisations
• simply recounting information obtained from texts
• giving anecdotal evidence or personal experience as a source of reference.