AC9LC8EC05 Year 7 Languages

AC9LC8EC05 – Year 7 Languages: Mediating meaning in and between languages

Strand

Communicating meaning in Chinese

Substrand

Mediating meaning in and between languages

This Content Descriptor from Year 7 Languages provides the specific knowledge and skills students should learn. Use it to plan lessons, create learning sequences, and design assessments that align with the Australian Curriculum v9.

Content Descriptor

develop and begin to apply strategies to interpret, translate and convey meaning in Chinese in familiar contexts

Elaborations

• using key words such as 是 and 的 to help translate English texts into Chinese
• comparing public information texts in Chinese, such as signs in shops, forecasts and announcements, to English equivalents and explaining their possible meaning and purpose, for example, the sign 休息中 on an unlit shop window to mean ‘closed’ instead of its literal meaning, ‘resting’, and identifying and translating specific information and key words, for example, 点, 度, 米, 公里, 元/块
• interpreting key ideas from Chinese to English with explanation of the contexts and the use of fixed phrases, for example, discussing what Chinese-speaking parents might say to their child when dropping them off at school, such as the Chinese version of “Have a good day” 听老师的话, 不要调皮; determining the English version of 加油; considering why people say 加油 at a sports event
• explaining key cultural concepts and practices to English speakers through translation, for example, “Do we translate 春节 as ‘Spring Festival’ or ‘Chinese New Year' ?”, “Why is 端午节 called ‘dragon boat festival’ in English?” “Does this translation capture the essence of this celebration?”, “What is lost in translation?”, “What are similar examples in English?”
• using etiquette phrases within appropriate contexts and discussing whether the meaning of 对不起 is the same across contexts, for example, comparing meaning in 对不起, 让一让 with 对不起, 我错了
• identifying Chinese symbols in print and digital texts such as the longevity symbol, and developing ways to include the culturally attached value when expressing the meaning of these symbols in English
• preparing bilingual presentations of data collected from various sources, including texts in English about familiar people, places and events, for example, 澳大利亚的总理, 澳洲旅游景点, 我是澳大利亚人, and reflecting on the translation process

Achievement Standard This Supports

This Content Descriptor contributes to the following Achievement Standard:

Year 7 ASLANCHISL7_10Y78

Year 7 Languages Achievement Standard

By the end of Year 8, students use Chinese language to interact and collaborate with others, and to share information and plan activities in familiar contexts. They respond to others’ contributions, and recognise familiar gestures, questions and instructions in exchanges. They recognise relationships between spoken and written forms. They locate and respond to information in texts and use non-verbal, visual and contextual cues to help make meaning. They respond in Chinese or English, and demonstrate understanding of context, purpose and audience in texts. They use familiar language, and modelled sentence and grammatical structures to create texts, and demonstrate understanding of how some language reflects cultural practices. They use some familiar characters and Pinyin to support learning.Students approximate Chinese sound patterns, tones, intonation and rhythms, and recognise the function of tone-syllables and Pinyin. They demonstrate understanding that Chinese has rules for characters, grammar, non-verbal, spoken and written communication. They comment on aspects of Chinese and English language structures and features, using metalanguage. They demonstrate awareness that the Chinese language is connected with culture and identity, and how this is reflected in their own language(s), culture(s) and identity.