The draft K-10 syllabuses for Modern Hebrew and Russian will be released on 11 June. This also includes a review of the Life Skills outcomes and content.

The syllabuses documents are available for download via NESA’s website.

Have your say by attending a consultation meeting held between 4-6pm on the following dates and venues:
- Monday 24 June Club Rose Bay

• - Wednesday 26 June NSW School of Languages, Petersham
• - Saturday 27 July St Alexander Nevsky Russian Saturday School, Homebush.

Life Skills targeted consultation meeting will be held on:
​- Wednesday 3 July NESA Office, Sydney City.

Draft syllabus consultation meetings contribute to 2 hours of NESA Registered PD addressing 6.2.2 and 7.4.2. Please visit NESA’s syllabus development page for more information. 

New course performance descriptors are available for the following syllabuses:
- Arabic
- Chinese
- French
- German
- Indonesian
- Italian
- Japanese
- Korean
- Modern Greek
- Spanish
- Turkish
- Vietnamese.

View the new course performance descriptors.

For more information, contact: 
Penny Vlies 
Senior Project Officer, Curriculum and Assessment

NESA has released new K-10 syllabuses for the following languages which are now available for familiarisation. They can be downloaded as PDF and Word documents from the NESA website:

• Arabic
• Modern Greek
• Turkish
• Vietnamese​​
  


• In 2019 schools will continue to deliver the current (2003) syllabuses.


• Timeline:
• 2019 – familiarisation and planning
• 2020 – implementation K-6 (if a school has a languages program), Year 7 and Year 9
• 2021 –  implementation Year 8 and Year 10

Implementation of the new syllabuses will commence from Term 1 2020. See syllabus pages for more information. 

Macquarie Japanese Studies Centre is offering an online, self-paced course, Incorporating Intercultural Language Learning, an online version of the face-to-face seminar presented by Professor Angela Scarino in August.All language teachers in NSW are invited to attend. Completion of the course will contribute to 2 hours of NESA registered professional development addressing standards 1.3.2, 6.2.2 and 6.4.2 towards maintaining accreditation at Proficient Teachers level in NSW. 

Enrolment opened on 27 September 2018 and will close on 21 October 2018, for course completion between 22 October and 18 November 2018. The course cost is $25 and is a two hour, self-paced module.

For more information visit the website, or contact the facilitator, Tomoko Koyama at the Macquarie Japanese Studies Centre.

We've had many requests to share the infographics we have created to support your understanding of key elements of the new K-10 syllabuses – we've published them previously on the blog and on Twitter.

You can download the infographics in the one file attached – you may like to display them at networking days, programming days or in the staff room.

They were created using www.canva.com – a free, online design platform which enables you to create social media graphics, posters, magazine covers, presentations and so on. There are a range of templates to choose from, with drag-and-drop features. You could use www.canva.com to create classroom resources, and it is also available to students aged 13 and over – just check the terms of use first.

The new syllabuses provide differentiated content for 3 broad learner groups in Stages 4 and 5. The main content is written for the second language learners - those students who are learning the language as a second or additional language.

There is differentiated content provided for those students with prior knowledge or experience in the language. These students have some exposure to the language, either at home or at school, but are not fluent or confident users. They may understand more than their non-background peers, but don’t have strong skills. For example, the student may have had some lessons in primary school, or at another high school, or have spent some time living in the country, but not going to school. The student may also hear a language spoken at home or in the community (for example, their grandparents speak to their parents in Chinese at home) and so they may understand the spoken language, but don’t read, write or speak confidently.

There is also differentiated content provided for those students with a background in the language. These students come to your classroom with considerable knowledge of the language. They may have attended school in a country where the language is spoken for part of their education, or have received considerable instruction in the language. For example, a student may come from a Greek-speaking family and may have attended Saturday school throughout their primary school years, they may have lived in Japan and attended an international school where they learned Japanese as well as English, or they have recently moved from Argentina where they spoke Spanish as their first language and attended school.

Now it becomes an easier task for teachers to select the appropriate content to cater for the learning needs of these 3 broad groups.  It should be noted that teachers are expected to choose the appropriate content according to the learners in their class and therefore, if a teacher is only teaching a class of second language learners and there are no students with prior knowledge/experience or background, the teacher simply selects the main content points to include and does not need to use the other content points.