Getting my licence / Laiseni faka’uli

Getting my licence / Laiseni faka’uli is written in English and Tongan, presented in parallel text to facilitate language learning. This is the story of how one Tongan teenager managed to get his licence despite all sorts of unexpected problems when he was an apprentice in New Zealand in the late 1960’s. These were the days when getting your licence in New Zealand was much less regulated than today. Sione Tapani Mangisi describes why he delayed taking up his employer’s offer to teach him to drive and what happened when he damaged the boss’s car in a parking bingle. The day of his test lurches from minor inconvenience to catastrophe with the testing officer an unwilling participant. It is B1+ in the CEFR framework and is designed to support students learning Tongan. It is presented in Arial font and with double spacing for ease of reading.