Ko e lea ʻi he telefoni: two recordings, one notice
Mele, Year 12, is entered for the Level 2 Lea Faka-Tonga listening internal. Her first language is Tongan, but she has been schooled in English and rarely writes Tongan. In the practice run the department plays two archive recordings, each twice only, and she must turn them into a notice for the printer. Recording 1 (48 seconds) is a voicemail from Sesilia, secretary of the Haveluloto kolo committee: help is wanted at a fundraising evening on 'Falaite, hongofulu mā hiva ʻo Sepitema, houa ono ʻo e efiafi', $15 a head, and each student should bring 'ha meʻakai ʻe taha'. Recording 2 (22 seconds, made a day later, with a truck idling outside) says the Friday event has been moved, mentions 'hongofulu mā ua' where Mele cannot tell whether it belongs to the fee or the date, and stops mid-sentence. Her notes read: Friday 19, 6 pm, $12, bring food. The teacher has ten minutes and will not play anything a third time.
1. Write the four lines that go on the printed notice (day, time, fee, what to bring). For each line, say whether it is something Mele heard or something she inferred.
Read the worked answer
Day - Friday 19 September. This is heard, and it is internally consistent: 19 September really is a Friday, so two independent facts support each other. Recording 2 does say the event has moved, but it never supplies the new day before the audio dies. You cannot print a notice on a sentence that stops mid-word.
Time - 6 pm, evening. Heard once, in Recording 1, uncontradicted. Label it 'confirmed once'.
Fee - $15, not $12. $15 was clear. The 'hongofulu mā ua' in Recording 2 floats: Mele could not attach it to a noun, and her note quietly attached it to the fee. That is her inference, and it is the most expensive one to get wrong.
Bring - one plate of food. Heard, clear.
What goes on the page. Print Friday 19 and 6 pm plainly, add 'phone Sesilia to confirm' beside the date, and do not print $12 at all. Two of the four lines rest on a single degraded source, and the cost of a wrong date is 30 students at an empty hall.
2. The teacher says: 'You heard it, but you have not listened.' Name two features of spoken Tongan that a learner working from written Tongan is most likely to miss, and explain how each could change a line of the notice.
Read the worked answer
1. Self-repair and afterthoughts. Spoken Tongan in a committee message is not edited prose: the speaker starts, backs up, and adds a condition at the end ('ia, pea...'). A learner transcribing word by word records the first version and loses the correction, which is exactly what has happened to the day. Rule: the last version of a fact in a message outranks the first, unless the message breaks off.
2. Borrowed and code-switched numerals. Numbers often arrive in English ('fifteen') or inside a Tongan frame, so the learner must convert on the run and, more importantly, decide which noun the number belongs to. Mele's $12 is a number without a noun.
3. The definitive accent. Final stress marks 'the' - fale versus falé - and it carries meaning with no written trace in a hurried note. Misplacing it can turn 'a hall' into 'the hall'. A learner keying only on word boundaries hears none of this.
3. Mele may make one phone call before the notice is printed. Write the two questions she should ask, in order, and justify the order.
Read the worked answer
Question 1 (date): 'ʻOku kei fai ʻa e polokalama ʻi he ʻaho Falaite, hongofulu mā hiva ʻo Sepitema?' - a closed question that can be answered yes or no, aimed at the item whose error would empty the hall.
Question 2 (fee): 'Ko e paʻanga ʻe hongofulu mā nima pe ko e hongofulu mā ua ki he tokotaha?' - the two candidate figures offered together, so Sesilia only has to choose.
Why this order. Ask about the item with the largest consequence first, because a phone call can be cut short. Both are closed questions: an open 'can you tell me about Saturday?' invites a two-minute answer and invites the committee to repeat the ambiguity.
What she should not do is ask 'did you change the fee?' - that presumes Mele's note is right and invites a yes on the wrong premise.