Years 7 and 8 Band Description
The nature of the learners
Students coming into this pathway are background learners of Hindi with varying degrees of proficiency in the language. All have family and community connections with the language and associated cultures, or with languages or dialects related to Hindi. Some may have recently arrived in Australia, have completed the primary years of schooling in Hindi or other Indian languages and have established literacy as well as oracy skills in the language. Others may have participated in community language programs during these years and have some literacy capabilities in Hindi. Others may have minimal experience of formal learning of the language, with little literacy proficiency and varying degrees of oral capabilities, depending on their home language environment. All students share the experience of belonging to worlds in which languages play a key role and diversity of language use is common. The curriculum takes into account the diversity of learners, ensuring that tasks and activities are flexible to cater for different language capabilities while being appropriately pitched to all learners’ cognitive and social levels.
Hindi language learning and use
Students use Hindi to interact with each other, the teacher and other speakers of the language, to access and exchange information, to express ideas and feelings, to participate and to cooperate in learning experiences and activities. They build vocabulary resources, grammatical knowledge and communicative capabilities such as active listening skills and interactional strategies through shared tasks that provide a context for purposeful language experience and through focused learning episodes that develop understanding of language systems and the ability to use metalanguage. They use modelled and rehearsed language to compose and present different types of texts (for example, shared stories, media and hypermedia texts, songs, poems, reports or journal entries). They plan, draft and present imaginative and informative texts, design interactive events and participate in discussions. They make cross-curricular connections and explore intercultural perspectives and experiences. Learners use ICT to support their learning in increasingly independent and intentional ways, exchanging resources with each other and with learners in different contexts.
Contexts of interaction
Students interact primarily with each other and the teacher in class, with some access to broader Hindi-speaking networks in the school and local community. ICT resources such as email, online chats or wikis provide access to additional experiences of authentic communication, connecting learners’ social worlds with those of Hindi-speaking peers in other contexts. Learners also have access to Hindi language experience through media, community events, websites, social media and radio streaming.
Texts and resources
Learners work with a range of texts designed for in-school learning of Hindi, such as textbooks, readers, literary texts, videos, online media resources and materials. They also access materials created for Hind-speaking communities, such as songs, films, magazines and social media texts such as blogs, advertisements and websites. They interact with a range of texts created for different purposes (for example, informational, transactional, communicative, expressive and imaginative texts) and make connections between these genres in Hindi and the work they do around similar texts in the English learning area.
Features of Hindi language use
Learners develop explicit knowledge of the forms and functions of language elements that they may already use fluently in their spoken language. Literacy development provides the opportunity not only to read and write the language but also to understand how it is formed and how it works. Learners learn how spoken language is represented in the Devanagari script by the use of 13 characters classified as vowels (अ-अः) and 35 as consonants (क-ह and ड़-ढ़) and that a line on the top joins letters to make words and leave spaces between words बस, घर। अब घर चल।. They recognise the matra form of vowels, such as ि, ी, distinguish long and short vowel sounds such as ि, ी and identify the pronunciation of vowel sounds in conjunction with consonants, कइ/कि, कई/की. They develop understanding of key features and core elements of grammar, including sentence structures, the form and function of pronouns, मैं, हम, यह, ये, तुम, तू, आप, मैं, मेरा, तुम्हारा।, the use of postpositions and gender and number agreements, लड़का गाता है। लड़की गाती है। लड़के गाते हैं. They compose statements and questions, such as तुम मेरे साथ चलो। तुम कैसे हो and use simple verb tenses such as गया था, जाऊँगा, जा रहा हूँ, खाया था, खा रहा हूँ, खाऊँगा. They position adverbs correctly in sentences, for example, धीरे-धीरे, जल्दी में, दौड़ते हुए and use negative forms of verbs and adjectives, for example, सोहन ने फिल्म नहीं देखी। झूठ कभी मत बोलो. They increase their range of vocabulary to domains beyond their personal experience and interests, and recognise loan words from languages such as English, Persian, Arabic, Turkish and Portuguese. They learn how the under-dotted characters क़, ख़, ग़, ज़, फ़ are used to represent loan sounds in Hindi. Learners use and analyse grammatical forms and sentence structures that express relationships between ideas, experiences and relationships, and develop awareness of how language structures shape textual features. They use descriptive and expressive language to create particular effects and to engage interest. They develop language knowledge, processing strategies and understanding of text conventions to assist in comprehending unfamiliar texts. They make connections between texts and cultural contexts, identifying how values and perspectives are embedded in language and how language choices determine how people, issues and experiences are represented. They are aware of the nature of the relationship between languages and cultures, noticing, for example, how particular Hindi words or expressions ‘carry’ cultural values or experiences. They reflect on the nature of bicultural and multicultural experience, on how languages change in response to broader social and cultural shifts, and how they perceive their own identities as users of two or more languages in a multicultural society.
Level of support
Differentiated support is required for learners with different levels of oracy and literacy proficiency. All learners require opportunities to review and consolidate learning; different degrees of balance between consolidation work and provision of more challenging tasks ensure learners at different levels are catered for. Teachers provide scaffolding, modelling and material and resource support for the development of fluency and accuracy in spoken language and of grammatical and literacy capabilities. Learners are supported to develop autonomy as language learners and users and to self-monitor and adjust language in response to their experience in different communicative contexts. They are encouraged to engage critically with resources such as websites, translating tools and other resources designed to strengthen their receptive and productive language use.
The role of English
Learners are encouraged to use Hindi whenever possible, including for discussion, explanation, comparison and reflection. English is used when appropriate, for example, when considering the nature and relationship of language and culture or in tasks that involve comparison and analysis of Hindi and English. The process of moving between/using both languages consolidates learners’ already established sense of what it means to be bilingual or multilingual and provides opportunities for reflection on the experience of living inter-culturally in intersecting language communities.