Achievement standard

At standard, students initiate, in part, and participate in spoken interactions in Chinese with others through collaborative tasks, activities and transactions to exchange information on aspects of childhood, teenage life and relationships. They use familiar descriptive and expressive language to share and compare personal opinions, such as 中国学生的作业比澳大利亚学生的多 and 我喜欢上网交朋友，你呢？ They engage in written interactions and activities, in simple characters, Pinyin and some English, about aspects of childhood, teenage life and relationships, referring to information stated, or requesting or providing further details. Students analyse key ideas and information from a range of spoken texts related to aspects of their personal and social worlds, and identify the different ways in which emotions, intentions and ideas are expressed. They collate and present, in written form, some different perspectives related to aspects of their personal and social worlds and identify context, purpose and intended audience. Students engage with imaginative performance-based texts, sharing opinions on characters and plot, comparing themes and content with English language texts created for similar audiences, and utilise these to create and perform their own texts. They create simple imaginative written texts that describe aspects of Chinese culture for different audiences. Students translate and interpret, with some accuracy, a range of texts, and discuss how to convey concepts that do not translate easily across different linguistic and cultural contexts. They monitor their language choices when using Chinese, and consider their own and others’ responses and reactions in intercultural communication. Students question some assumptions and values and, occasionally, modify their language and behaviours in relation to different cultural perspectives. They also investigate and share family and cultural traditions and experiences, considering how these have shaped, and continue to shape, personal and cultural identity.

Students better understand the systems of the Chinese language, exploring the role of emphasis, stress and rhythm to express subtle meaning in interactions. They apply basic knowledge of character form and function to infer information about the sound and meaning of unfamiliar characters. Students discuss how the Chinese language works, using metalanguage to describe the distinctive spoken and written language system of Chinese. They use familiar vocabulary and apply elements of grammar, with a satisfactory level of accuracy. Students compare the use of words that rely on interpretation of context to convey the intended meaning, such as 让、给, comparing extracts from a range of spoken and written texts which use the same word in a different way. They express conditions, for example, 如果…就; expressing cause and effect, for example, 为了… and expressing the condition, quality or result of an action, for example, 坐得下、说得对、做完、买到. Students experiment with the use of 成语 (Chinese set expressions) and famous sayings to substantiate ideas in Chinese. Students experiment with 的 as a subject modifier to express ideas that would contain relative clauses in English. They explain the purpose, structures and some language features of contemporary texts in Chinese. Students explore how the Chinese language continues to adapt over time and is influenced by local and global contexts and cultures. They explain, with some examples, the influence of language on people’s actions, values and beliefs, and seek to appreciate the scale and importance of linguistic diversity in groups and cultures. Students explore how language choices reflect cultural practices and values that can be difficult for speakers of other languages to interpret.