The nature of the learners

Learners at this level are developing their cognitive and social capabilities and their communicative repertoire in the language, as well as becoming increasingly aware of their social worlds and their membership of various groups, including the Deaf community. They are more independent and less egocentric, enjoying both competitive and cooperative activities. Learners are able to conceptualise and reason, and have better memory and focus. They benefit from varied, activity-based learning that builds on their interests and capabilities and makes connections with other areas of learning.

Auslan learning and use

Learners in this band engage in a range of activities involving watching and responding to signed texts. They build proficiency through the provision of rich language input from a variety of sources where grammatical forms and language features are purposefully integrated. They develop more elaborate conversational and interactional skills, including initiating and sustaining conversations, reflecting on and responding to others’ contributions, making appropriate responses and adjustments, and engaging in debate and discussion.

Learners at this stage express ideas and feelings related to their personal worlds, give and follow directions, negotiate with and persuade others, paraphrase content of texts, form factual questions to request information, check and clarify understanding and participate in play and shared tasks, including planning and rehearsing presentations or performances.

They watch and create short texts on topics relevant to their interests and enjoyment, such as family, pets, favourite activities or food. They continue to build vocabulary that relates to a wider range of domains, such as areas of the curriculum that involve some specialised language use. The language used in routine activities is re-used and reinforced from lesson to lesson in different situations, making connections between what has been learnt and what is to be learnt.

Contexts of interaction

Learning occurs largely through interaction with peers and the teaching team in the language classroom and the school environment, with some sharing of their learning at home. Additional enrichment and authentication of learning experience is provided through interactions with elders and other signers in the Deaf community. Access to wider communities of Auslan signers and resources also occurs through virtual and digital technology.

Texts and resources

Learners interact with a growing range of live and digital signed texts. They engage primarily with a variety of teacher-generated materials, stories and games, and with materials produced for young signers, such as storytelling apps. They have access to materials produced for signing children from the BANZSL family of languages as a means of broadening their cultural knowledge and awareness of the diversity of language experience.

Features of Auslan use

Learners recognise and apply elements of Auslan grammar, such as marking manner or aspect on verbs. They use increasingly sophisticated means of showing constructed action, and of using space to track a character or location through a text for purposes of cohesion. They develop metalanguage for talking about language, understanding and using terms such as fully- or partly-lexical signs, entity, handling or SASS depicting signs, constructed action, and adverbs and clauses.

Learners talk about differences and similarities they notice between Auslan and English, and also between cultural behaviours and ways of communicating. A balance between language knowledge and language use is established by integrating focused attention to grammar, vocabulary building, and non-verbal and cultural dimensions of language use with communicative and purposeful learning activity.

Learning Auslan in school contributes to the process of making sense of the learners’ worlds, which characterises this stage of development. Students are increasingly aware that various signed languages are used in Deaf communities across the world. As they engage consciously with differences between languages and cultures, they make comparisons and consider differences and possibilities in ways of communicating in different languages. This leads them to explore concepts of identity and difference, to think about cultural and linguistic diversity, and about what it means to speak more than one language in the contemporary world.

Level of support

While learners work more independently at this level, ongoing support is incorporated into tasks, and the process of learning is supported by systematic feedback and review. Form-focused activities, particularly those increasing metalinguistic awareness, build grammatical knowledge and support the development of accuracy and control in Auslan. Opportunities to use this knowledge in meaningful activities build communicative skills, confidence and fluency. Tasks are carefully scaffolded: teachers provide models and examples; introduce language, concepts and resources needed to manage and complete learning activities; make time for experimentation and polishing rehearsed texts; and provide support for self-monitoring and reflection. The language students see is authentic with some modification. Discussion supports learning and develops learners’ conceptual frame for talking about systems of language and culture.

The role of English

Auslan is the principal medium of instruction in L1 pathway classrooms. English plays a complementary role; for example, it is used when translating, creating bilingual/multilingual texts or comparing and contrasting languages. Discussion in Auslan supports learning, develops conceptual frames and builds metalanguage. The process of moving between languages consolidates the already established sense of what it means to be bilingual or multilingual and provides opportunities for reflection on the experience of living interculturally in intersecting language communities. Auslan is learnt in parallel with English literacy and, for some children, spoken English. The learning of Auslan supports and enriches deaf children’s learning of English, and vice versa.