Radio New Zealand International

Radio New Zealand International is the radio station owned by Radio New Zealand which acts as a Crown entity which means it is owned by the government but independent of the government. Its job is to broadcast internationally and give a New Zealand perspective on the world.
They provide news and programming in English and nine other Pacific languages.

Nine stories in under nine minutes

We listened to a news report about the Pacific region from 4:00 pm (New Zealand time) on 03 February 2014 and you can listen to it again by clicking here

The process we followed was to:

• listen once
• work in small groups to try to work out what was being talked about
• share it with everyone
• listen a second time
• try using the framework we had to developed to see if we can pick out any more ideas from the report.

Here are the notes we made on the stories ( blue for the first hearing and red for the second)

1. First story
   • a man from El Salvador arrived in the Marshall Islands after 13 months at sea
   • while sailing across the Pacific he had eaten turtles, birds and fish and drunk turtle blood
   • he had travelled in a fibreglass yacht
   • he was currently in hospital in the capital
2. Second story
   • seasonal workers from Tonga going to New Zealand and Australia
   • 3000 workers currently travel to work in the horticultural sector
   • remitting (sending back) 30 million US Dollars per year to Tonga
   • 1500 thousand workers have registered for the scheme
3. Third story
   • The Salvation Army held the contract for providing welfare services for refugees and asylum seekers
   • Transfield, a construction industry company with interests in recreational provision, won the new contract
   • forty percent of the staff would be retained by the new contractors
   • the contract was worth five million US Dollars
   • the priority of Transfield would be to its shareholders not the clients
4. Fourth story
   • Nine retired (blue) Fijian teachers (six male and three female) have travelled to Vanuatu.
   • to teach agricultural science, sport and to possibly help in church
   • the local union felt that locals showed by employed to do these jobs
   • their contract was for 2 years and half the costs would be paid by the Fijian government and half by the Vanuatuan government
5. Fifth story
   • A women’s rights workshop was held on Fiji and twenty women attended
   • (blue) only 4.6 percent of the elected officials in the Pacific were women. The lowest in any part of the world
   • The group aims to support in the election in September
6. Sixth story
   • A land use policy was being implemented in the Solomon Islands
7. Seventh story
   • A new huge %(blue)tuna canning factory was opening in America Samoa
   • The Chief Operations Officer wants fishermen to bring their fish to his cannery where they will be well-paid for their catches
8. Seventh story
   • Tongan women are better agricultural workers than the men as they were more reliable
   • they are more skilled with more dexterous fingers
   • they are better at pollenating vanilla pods said a New Zealand importer of Vanilla
9. Eighth story
   • Cooked breadfruit were being prepared for export to Australia as New Zealand banned its importation

Skills in listening

We found that listening and talking about the news broadcast helped us to understand and pick out the words and key phrases in our second listening. It is like putting together a jigsaw puzzle or playing Tetris

A breadfruit

I have never seen a breadfruit though from its name I suspect it is a source of carbohydrate like potatoes in Germany, rice in China and Japan and maize in Mesoamerica. I will endeavour to find an breadfruit to see what they are like and bring it in to class if I am successful.