Spanish Beginners

About the subject

In this subject students develop their ability to communicate and interact in a variety of contexts for a range of purposes, within and across languages and cultures.

Students develop the skills of listening, speaking, reading, and writing, and use information and communication technologies, to create and engage effectively with a range of spoken, written, and multimodal texts in Spanish

Course content

Students develop the skills of listening, speaking, reading, and writing, and information and communication technologies to create and engage effectively with a range of spoken, written, visual, and multimodal texts in the particular language. They develop and apply linguistic and intercultural knowledge, understanding, and skills.

• interacting with others in Spanish in interpersonal situations
• creating texts in Spanish for specific audiences, purposes, and contexts
• analysing texts that are in Spanish to interpret meaning
• comparing languages and how they work as a system
• reflecting on the ways in which culture is created, expressed, and communicated through language.

Students explore the three interconnected themes of Relationships, Lifestyles, and Experiences from the perspectives of ‘The Personal World’ and ‘The Spanish speaking Communities.

Assessment

School Based Assessment

Students will undertake 5 assessment tasks from the following 3 assessment types:

• Type 1: Interaction (Individual or in pairs)
• Type 2: Text Production (Creative Writing)
• Type 3: Text Analysis (Read texts in Spanish and answer questions in either English or Spanish as required)

External Assessment

Assessment Type 4: Examination (30%)

The examination consists of two assessments:

• an oral examination
• a written examination.

Oral Examination

The oral examination is designed to assess primarily students’ knowledge and skill in using spoken Spanish. The oral examination takes approximately 10 minutes and has two sections.

Written Examination

The 2½-hour written examination, plus 10 minutes’ reading time, has three sections:

• Section I: Listening
• Section II: Reading
• Section III: Writing.

Students are allowed to use monolingual and/or bilingual printed dictionaries in the written examination.

Performance Standards

The Spanish Beginners 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.