Stage 2 Chinese Background Speakers

About the subject

In this subject students develop intercultural communication skills through examining relationships between language, culture, and identity and reflecting on the ways in which culture is created, expressed, and communicated through language. Students clarify, extend, and develop their ideas and opinions on the prescribed themes and contemporary issues, and develop their capability to communicate, interact, and negotiate meanings within and across languages and cultures.

Course Content

Prescribed Themes and Prescribed Contemporary Issues.

• China and the World;
• Modernisation and Social Change;
• The Overseas Chinese-speaking Communities;
• Language in Use in Contemporary China)

The study of themes, presented through a range of texts, enables students to reflect on how languages work as a system, and the ways in which culture is expressed through language. Students develop skills in exchanging, analysing, and evaluating information, opinions, and ideas.

Assessment

All Stage 2 subjects have a school-based assessment component and an external assessment component.

Teachers design a set of school-based assessments that enable students to demonstrate the knowledge, skills, and understanding they have developed to meet the learning requirements of the subject. These assessments provide students’ evidence of learning in the school-based assessment component.

The following assessment types enable students to demonstrate their learning in Stage 2 locally assessed languages at background speakers level:

• School-based Assessment
  
  • Assessment Type 1: Folio (50%)
  • Assessment Type 2: In-depth Study (20%)
• External Assessment
  
  • Assessment Type 3: Examination (30%).

Students should provide evidence of their learning through eight to ten assessments, including the external assessment component. Students undertake three to five assessments for the folio

• one oral presentation in Chinese one written response to the topic in Chines and one reflective response in English for the in-depth study
• one oral examination
• one written examination.

Oral Examination

The oral examination is designed to assess primarily students’ knowledge and skill in using spoken Chinese to discuss issues related to their in-depth study and the research process. The oral examination takes approximately 15 minutes.

Written Examination (2 hours 10 minutes)

The written examination has three sections:

• Section 1: Listening and Responding
• Section 2: Reading and Responding
• Section 3: Writing in Chinese

Performance Standards

The Chinese Background Speakers Subject Outline includes performance standards, which describe five levels of achievement that are reported with the grades A to E at the student’s completion of the subject.

The school-based assessments and the external assessment will be graded with reference to the performance standards.