Content

Stage 1 Australian Languages — Additional Language is a 10‑credit subject or a 20‑credit subject that consists of the following three focus areas:

• self and community — using [Additional Language] to interact with others and create resources about the students’ own worlds
• [Additional Language] community — understanding community life, connections, Country protocols, stories, and histories
• Australia and the wider world — exploring the cultures and languages of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, relationships with other Australians and the wider world.

Students study all three focus areas.

The focus areas are broad enough to allow flexibility in school programs, but specific enough to be of practical assistance to students and teachers. They are intended to be taught independently. They are not necessarily designed to be of equal length and they may be sequenced and structured to suit individual groups of students.

Students should study a range of cultural resources, including those in [Additional Language].

The length of time and depth of treatment for each focus area will depend on a number of factors, including:

• particular learning requirement(s) being covered
• how familiar the student is with topics studied previously
• needs and interests of the students
• access to cultural resources
• the nature of the language itself
• linguistic and conceptual complexity of the resources selected for study
• linguistic and sociocultural distance between the focus area and the student’s own world and experience
• assessments (including ways in which they are structured and the conditions under which they are set)
• language of the response.

The three focus areas are discussed in more detail below.