Work samples

Languages: Spanish

Years 9 and 10 (Year 7 entry)

Satisfactory

Invitación para un amigo

Summary of task

Students learnt the vocabulary and language structures to describe leisure activities for young people, to interact with friends and how to make suggestions and invitations.  Students also learnt about adjustment of language for purpose, context and audience, including for oral and written texts, cultural assumptions and levels of language.

This task has two parts:

Part 1

Students were asked to work in pairs and assume one person was an Australian student who has travelled to Argentina on exchange and the other is an Argentinian friend. The Argentinian friend invites the Australian student to attend an event or outing of interest to teenagers. They were asked to plan the outing together, writing the script of a phone call using text-type appropriate language and conventions to decide on the course of action.

Arrangements might include:

  • Nature of the event and justification
  • Time and place of meeting
  • Travel and meal arrangements
  • Personal reflections.

Part 2

Students were asked to reflect on the language of the invitation (Part 1) and explain language levels and features, and grammatical use. They were asked to consider how language use varies depending on the context, purpose and audience and how language influences and reflects culture.

Students were asked to:

  • Consider, when speaking to a friend, what adjustments you made to your language. How and why? How would you speak if you were having a similar conversation with an adult/ teacher?
  • Describe what was difficult, interesting and/or challenging with this task, for example, language and cultural observations and differences.
  • Explain some features of language used in this task.
  • Consider what cultural assumptions people bring when interacting and communicating.

Achievement standard

By the end of Year 10, students interact in written and spoken Spanish to communicate about personal experiences, relationships and aspirations, and broader local and global issues such as the environment, social media and tourism, including issues that pertain to Spanish-speaking countries. Learners interact with peers to make decisions, solve problems, and negotiate and plan action in response to issues. When interacting, they use both rehearsed and spontaneous language and appropriate protocols (for example, Perdona, pero no estoy de acuerdo contigo porque …, me parece mejor … ¿qué os parece si…?) to express and compare opinions, share perspectives, and express agreement or disagreement (for example, Me parece que…, ¿qué les parece?, Quebuena ideame opongo). They apply rules of pronunciation, stress and intonation to a range of sentence types. They locate, summarise and analyse information from a range of texts, and communicate different perspectives and information in a range of contexts using different modes of presentation. They respond to and create personal, descriptive, informative and imaginative texts for different purposes, audiences and contexts using appropriate Spanish writing conventions. They use grammatical elements including present, imperfect, past and future tenses, reflexive verbs, and the subjunctive mood to express emotion (for example, Como chocolate todos los días, Fui al parque ayer, Salíamos a bailar los fines de semana, Estudiaré informática en la universidad). They use appropriate forms of possessive adjectives in own language production, as well as cohesive devices and prepositions to create cohesion and interest. They use relative pronouns (for example, El programa que miraba era cómico), relative clauses (for example, Mi amigo chileno me ha dicho que quiere venir con nosotras al cine) and adverbial phrases (for example, a la derechacon frecuencia) to extend and elaborate their written texts. They work in Spanish and English to translate and create bilingual texts, explaining words or expressions that are culturally specific such as tapas, adobe, vaquero, Vive en el quinto pino, … más largo que un día sin pan. They describe their own reactions in intercultural exchanges and explain how their own assumptions and identity influence their language use.

Students identify differences in accent and pronunciation across the Spanish-speaking world, such as the use ceceo and seseo in different regions and countries. They use metalanguage to explain features of language (formal and informal language) and grammar (for example, las formas negativasel futuro próximo con el verbo ir, masculino, femenino, singular, plural), and for reflecting on the experience of Spanish language and culture learning. They identify relationships between parts of words (prefixes and suffixes) and stems of words (for example, desagradable, la camioneta, la reconciliación), and how word patterns connect words in semantic families (for example, mercado, mercancía, feliz, felicidad, felicitaciones). They analyse the textual features of a range of texts in different modes and identify how these shape responses and influence meaning. They give examples of how Spanish is used in a variety of ways to achieve different purposes in different contexts and for different audiences. Students describe changes in the role of Spanish as a global language and explain how language both influences and reflects culture. They know that Spanish is co-official with many other languages in a range of countries, such as Guaraní in Paraguay; Quechua in Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru; and Basque/Euskera, Catalan and Galician in Spain. They explain how meanings and interpretations vary according to the cultural assumptions that people bring to interactions, and consider how learning a second language provides the opportunity to view oneself from the perspectives of others.

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