Languages, Foundation – Year 10 (Version 8.4)

The Australian Curriculum: Languages is designed to enable all students in Australia to learn a language in addition to English. The Languages curriculum recognises that students bring their own linguistic and cultural background to their learning, whether this is English or the target language or various combinations of languages. The organisation of the curriculum addresses learner background in the target language by providing a number of pathways and entry points of study to cater for background language learners, first language learners and second language learners.

The Australian Curriculum: Languages includes language-specific curricula and two frameworks. View the Australian Curriculum: Languages information sheet (PDF 339 kb)

The Australian Curriculum: Languages was published between 2014 and 2016:

Visit the Australian Curriculum website to view the Foundation – Year 10 Australian Curriculum: Languages curricula.

Languages collage


The development of the Australian Curriculum: Languages

2009

Development of the Australian Curriculum: Languages commenced to address an appropriate rationale for learning languages and to design the structure of the Languages curricula.

In 2010, the National Languages Forum was held. Approximately 150 people with expertise and/or interest in languages education from across Australia participated. The feedback from the forum was analysed and used to inform the development of the Shape of the Australian Curriculum: Languages document (PDF 1.2 mb).

2011

Stakeholder consultation on the consultation report on the draft Shape of the Australian Curriculum: Languages (PDF 1.3 mb)  was conducted. ACARA received responses from a wide range of stakeholders representing many languages, including teachers, principals, parents, students, academics, professional associations, state and territory education authorities, and the general public.

Following consultation revisions, the Shape of the Australian Curriculum: Languages paper (PDF 1.1 mb) was published. This document provides broad directions for the development of Languages curriculum.

Writing of the draft Foundation – Year 10 Australian Curriculum: Languages document (PDF 1 mb) This was conducted in a staged approach:

Stage 1. Drafting of the overview section, presented as an introduction to the Languages learning area, and drafting of Chinese and Italian curricula.

Stage 2. Drafting of the Framework for Aboriginal Languages and Torres Strait Islander Languages, and Arabic, French, German, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Modern Greek, Spanish and Vietnamese language curricula.

2012–13

Consultation on the draft Framework for Aboriginal Languages and Torres Strait Islander Languages was supplemented by a series of face-to-face community consultation forums across the country. These forums engaged local communities and gathered targeted feedback on the draft Framework.

See the consultation report on the draft Framework for Aboriginal Languages and Torres Strait Islander Languages (PDF 2.4 mb) 

Stage 3. Drafting of the Auslan, Hindi and Turkish curricula as well as a Framework for Classical Languages (including curricula for Classical Greek and Latin, Years 7–10).

2015

The draft Hindi and Turkish curricula were made available for public consultation. 

2016

The draft curriculum for Auslan and Framework for Classical Languages (including exemplars in Classical Greek and Latin, Years 7–10) were made available for public consultation on the Australian Curriculum Consultation website, informing the Australian Curriculum: Languages Consultation report version 2.0.

2017

Work samples collection and annotation commenced for Chinese, French, Indonesian, Italian and Japanese.

2018

Work sample portfolios for Chinese, French, Indonesian, Italian and Japanese were published on the Australian Curriculum website. Each portfolio demonstrates student learning at the achievement standard.

Work samples collection and annotation commenced for Arabic, German, Korean, Modern Greek, Spanish and Vietnamese.

Curriculum languages