The AusVELS
Curriculum
Languages
Roman alphabet Languages
For use in 2017 only
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Introduction to Languages
Languages contribute materially to the universal purposes of schooling and to the development of skills in thinking and reflection. They support the moral, social and economic initiation of young people into the culture and wider civilisation that surrounds them. Learning a language nurtures reflective, deep and creative thinking in specific ways, cultivates culturally distinctive fields of knowledge, and stimulates awareness of intellectual functioning. In unique ways, languages require learners to engage in self-reflection because effective communication in a new language requires the learner to move outside the norms, practices and acquired behaviours of their first language.
Languages infuse the entire curriculum with both taught and incidental insights into how knowledge is organised by different sociocultural communities, and introduce awareness of important distinctions in meaning, sound, and sound patterns, social arrangements, order and sequencing of information, categories and relations. These skills can directly enhance the general intellectual development of young people.
In learning a language, students develop communication skills and knowledge and come to understand social, historical, familial relationships and other aspects of the specific language and culture of the speakers of the language they are studying. Learners are also provided with the tools, through comparison and reflection, to understand language, culture and humanity in a broad sense. In this way, language learning contributes to the development of interculturally aware citizens, of increasing importance at a time of rapid and deep globalisation.
Structure of the Languages Domain
Pathways
As students may begin their Languages studies at different stages, learning focus statements and standards are offered for two pathways which recognise the student’s point of entry into the study:
Pathway 1: for students who begin learning a language in primary school and continue to study the same language to Level 10. This consists of eleven levels (F–10)
Pathway 2: for students who begin learning a language in Year 7. This consists of four levels (7-10).
Learning focus
Learning focus statements are written for each level. These outline the learning that students need to focus on if they are to progress in the domain and achieve the standards at the levels where they apply. They suggest appropriate learning experiences from which teachers can draw to develop relevant teaching and learning activities.
Standards
Standards define what students should know and be able to do at different levels and are written for each dimension.
In Languages standards are introduced for assessment and reporting at Level 5. While it is clear that students gain most benefit from the study of another language when they begin this study in the early levels, it is acknowledged that some schools choose to maximise the effect of their resources by introducing Languages programs at different levels with appropriate time allocations. In recognition of the cumulative nature of language learning, the Languages domain includes phases of learning, which provide a typical sequence of second language development leading to Level 5. Regardless of the level at which the study of a language other than English is introduced, students will need to develop the knowledge and skills described in the phases of learning before they attempt the learning associated with the Level 6 standards. These phases of learning also assist schools that provide Languages programs prior to Levels 5 and 6, to assess and report effectively on student achievement.
Standards relevant to each of the language categories appear beside one of the language categories (see below) from Level 6 onwards.
Language categorisation
For the purposes of organising the learning demands on students, languages can be broadly grouped into five categories. This curriculum focuses on:
Roman alphabetical languages – languages whose writing system, or means of being visually recorded, is Roman alphabetic, and whose reading demands on learners are similar to those of English (examples include: Australian Indigenous languages, French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Spanish, Vietnamese).
Standards in the Communicating in a language other than English dimension include an initial section common to all language categories and additional standards specific to the language categories. From Level 6, the standards in the language categories focus on reading and writing skills.
Students can also learn about Victorian Aboriginal Languages, which involves the process of language reclamation and the study of Victorian Aboriginal cultures. Schools should follow the processes outlined in the Aboriginal Languages, cultures and reclamation in Victorian schools: standards P–10 and protocols booklet prior to incorporating this language category in their teaching programs, with resources available at Aboriginal Languages and Cultures Victoria.
Dimensions
This domain has two dimensions:
· Communicating in a language other than English
· Intercultural knowledge and language awareness.
The two dimensions of the Languages domain are intimately linked. Communicating in a language other than English allows learners to reflect on language as a system and gain cultural insight. In turn, Intercultural knowledge and language awareness can provide cultural guidelines for effective communication.
Communicating in a language other than English
In the Communicating in a language other than English dimension, students learn the knowledge, skills and behaviours relevant to the specific language being studied. The skills of this dimension include listening, speaking, reading, viewing, writing, and the use of body language, visual cues and signs. The application of these skills requires knowledge of linguistic elements, including vocabulary and grammar. This dimension requires familiarity with a wide variety of texts and genres in print and electronic form.
Intercultural knowledge and language awareness
Communication skills in a language other than English foster intercultural knowledge and awareness of language as a system. The Intercultural knowledge and language awareness dimension develops students’ knowledge of the connections between language and culture, and how culture is embedded throughout the communication system. Progress through this dimension is demonstrated through performance in the language being studied. The understandings are universal and are gained by comparing languages, including English.
Students gain an awareness of the influence of culture in the learner’s own life and first language. Different languages and language communities organise social relations and information in different ways and values differ from one community to another. Through cultural self-awareness, the ability to rationally discuss and compare cultural differences is developed. This dimension involves developing curiosity about and openness to a variety of values and practices, as well as acquiring in-depth knowledge of the diverse cultural traditions of the source societies.
Stages of Learning in Languages
AusVELS takes account of the developmental stages of learning young people experience at school. While student learning is a continuum and different students develop at different rates, they broadly progress through three stages of learning.
The following statements describe ways in which these characteristics relate to learning experiences and standards in each of the three stages of learning in the Languages domain.
Although some of the processes that we use to learn our first language, or mother tongue, are involved in learning a second language, there are also considerable differences. For most children, the mother tongue is learned within a family, where many people are involved in making clear the connection between sounds and actions, messages and basic needs. For a child’s first language, the input is continuous and full time, much of it is adjusted to the child’s needs, and the child’s efforts at communicating are acknowledged, guided and accepted.
A second-language learner already knows the essential functions of voice or signed communication, and how language is involved, when engaging in meaningful activities. The learning usually occurs at school with far fewer providers offering input, for far less time, and shared by many more learners. The providers tend to be adults rather than people of all ages, the learners tend to be of similar ages, the relationships are professional rather than intimate, and the input is restricted in time, quantity, meaning, and personal significance for the learners.
Prep to Year 4 – Laying the foundations
In the earliest years of learning a second language, some processes and sequences are similar to those involved in first language acquisition. Language is adapted to students’ direct needs. Ideally, students are immersed in communication tasks that are engaging, relevant, well designed and directly linked to their general learning experiences.
A second language makes its own specific cognitive, behavioural and emotional demands on, and contributions to, the development of the learner. Students detach from the intimacy of family and connect with teachers and fellow students. The new social world of the second-language classroom requires students to adapt from self expression in the mother tongue to the new norms and practices of the target language. The cognitive demands on the learner are significant. Learners need to transfer to a new communication code their only recently acquired skills as social beings and are required to learn the distinctive rules and conventions of the target language.
Students will notice a contrast between the two language systems. They will notice various culturally specific ways in which meaning is constructed and conveyed in the target language. As speaking and listening come before reading and writing, the foundational processes of learning a second language will ideally immerse students in concrete oral communication activities. The focus of these tasks should be on ‘getting things done’ – in music, drama, dance, drawing and painting, physical activity and early science or number experimentation – rather than language. Continual immersion in the target language for activities in which naturalistic communication prevails minimises the chance that students will continually translate. However, while teachers will use only the target language for activities, they will accept all forms of communication from students – communication in English, code-mixing between the target language and English, and the use of other languages, mime, gesture and so on. By modelling only correct forms of the target language, the teacher’s language becomes the key source of input for students’ growing ability to discern and use the target language for classroom communication. Students need to gain ‘procedural language’ early so that they and the teacher will share a communication code for all classroom activities.
For students of a language with close connections to English, and a similar alphabetic writing system, these years also make bridges between students’ evolving literacy in English and their growing familiarity with the writing system of the target language. For students of target languages that are familiar from the home, the connection between the sounds and symbols of the target language is a valuable resource. For learners of a language whose writing system is unlike that of English, this foundational stage of learning needs to build on noticing differences between the two writing systems.
In Prep to Year 4, all areas of the curriculum can support the learning of a second language other than English; such study reinforces, extends and enriches all other learning. All teachers can make a direct and powerful connection establishing confident early literacy practices between English and the language other than English. Becoming literate helps students realise that language has form and structure as well as meaning. The study of a second language at school bolsters this important insight and helps students to extend and deepen their overall literacy. Learning a second language can show students that the conventions of writing and speaking in any language are arbitrary – the result of choices that have been made.
Through communication, students begin to recognise a range of expressions, greetings, and other formulaic language for routine interactions with people, and notice that these vary according to the participants. Much of this communication is scaffolded and prompted by the teacher, and related to concrete experiences in the classroom.
In all the practices described above, the two dimensions of the domain – Communicating in a language other than English and Intercultural knowledge and language awareness – are integrated with the entire range of learning experiences of students between Prep and Year 4.
Years 5 to 8 – Building breadth and depth
Years 5 to 8 encompass the transition from childhood to adolescence. This is a critical and challenging period for students and teachers. Emotionally, it can be a difficult time for students and it can have particular effects and challenges for second language study. In Languages, this stage of learning comprises two distinct phases and contains the traditional period of second-language teaching in our school system.
In the first phase (Years 5 and 6) – essentially an extension of the first stage of learning – students extend in depth and breadth the words, expressions, texts, ideas, relationships and activities they know of the second language.
In the second phase (Years 7 and 8), although the nature and level of teacher scaffolding and prompting is reduced and students are now encouraged to interact, directly or through various media, with a range of speakers of the target language, the essential process is similar. However, this second phase is qualitatively different. The onset of puberty affects students’ emotional lives, and the maturational and physical changes involved often have deep consequences for identity, relationships, motivation, behaviour and cognitive development. Such changes, stressful but exciting, coincide with more overt standards being expected of students, an unfamiliar subject division in the curriculum, and a significant change in the institutional operating arrangements of schooling.
Years 7 and 8 are also a challenge for teachers and schools, and specific planning and collaboration across schools to ensure that Pathway 1 and Pathway 2 students are catered for. Pathway 1 students – those who are continuing with languages studied at primary school – need to have their prior study acknowledged and recognised; Pathway 2 students are those who take up languages for the first time at Year 7, or who change from the language they studied at primary school. The many changes that characterise Years 5 to 8 have an impact on teaching too; activities that younger students find enjoyable, such as playing with the sounds and communication style of a new language, might represent a problem for those experiencing difficulties in the process of transition to adolescence.