Level A2 Speaking and Listening

The students' performance in these tasks suggest that they are working within the range of Level A2 in Speaking and Listening. The assessing teacher will need to consider a range of writing samples in order to determine whether each student is at the beginning of A2, consolidating A2 or at the A2 standard in Speaking and Listening.   

At beginning Level A2 students:

• communicate effectively in English, using simple sentences and learned formulae
• use comprehensible pronunciation, stress and intonation
• can use some appropriate terms when requested, relying on non-verbals to indicate level of politeness in other pragmatic events
• can join in well-rehearsed and well-known songs, by following peers and/or teacher
• take part in everyday activities and routines, relying heavily on a supportive teacher or peer.

At consolidating Level A2 students:  

• can participate in routine exchanges like greetings and simple classroom routines without great difficulty
• can generate own language beyond formulae and two-word utterances
• will use approximations of structures as they test hypotheses
• find discussions between teacher and learners at fluent speaker speed still too difficult for them to participate in.

At Level A2 Achievement Standard students:  

• communicate in an expanding range of predictable social and learning situations
• express ideas and identify key points of information in classroom discussions about familiar topics, and in new topics when they are well supported by visual material, an appropriate pace of delivery, and discussion that links their prior knowledge to the new context
• follow a short sequence of instructions related to classroom procedures and learning activities
• negotiate familiar social and learning situations, using English appropriate to the situation
• adjust their speech choices in response to audience and topic
• combine known conversational formulas and vocabulary, including some from texts read in class, and apply some grammatical rules to make original utterances of varying grammatical accuracy
• sustain communication by negotiating turn-taking and by using strategies such as asking a speaker to repeat or to speak slowly or asking what a word means.
  

Student information

This student was born in Thailand to Burmese parents. She speaks Burmese at home. She is six years and four months old and has been in Australia for four years and nine months. She attended an English language school for one year before moving to her current school, where she is in Year 1 and participating in a refugee support program.   

Task

The task involves the student retelling the story of Little Red Riding Hood following a class reading of the book. The students in the group are retelling parts of the story, following prompts from the teacher and using the pictures in the big book the teacher read to them. This is a genre that is familiar to the students as they have previously read other folk tales and children's stories, including other versions of this story. The children went on to further activities that involved them retelling and demonstrating their comprehension of the story.   

The teacher was assessing how well the student could use sequence markers and retell parts of the text with teacher support. In particular, the teacher was observing how well the student:   

• actively listens in classroom interactions
• responds and acts in ways that are appropriate to the context of the interaction
• describes a sequence of events or actions
• speaks clearly and intelligibly.

In the transcript, the words spoken by the student being assessed are in bold. 

This sample of student work demonstrates that the student can:

• Understand phrases describing place or location (VCEALL105)
  
• Use words learnt from a range of classroom and social contexts (VCEALL108)
• Understand key information in a short spoken or multimodal text (VCEALC087)
  
• Employ communicative strategies to enhance meaning (VCEALL111)
• Combine known formulas, structures and other vocabulary to communicate (VCEALL100)
  

Student information

This student is 6 years and 5 months old and is in Grade 1. They were born in Australia but spoke mainly Vietnamese at home before starting school a year and a half ago. They spent much of their first school year in lockdowns due to COVID. They speak Vietnamese at home.

Task

Students have been studying Australian animals, habitats and environment in their class Inquiry unit. In EAL, they have been discussing the needs of different animals, and practising using modal verbs to describe why an animal needs to live in its habitat. In this task, students revise the animal habitats, before giving advice about protecting animal habitats. The teacher is assessing the student’s ability to understand and use modality.

The words spoken by the student being assessed are in bold.

This sample of student work demonstrates that the student can:

• Understand key information in a short spoken or multimodal text - understanding common sentence structures that make connections between ideas (VCEALC087)
• Understand phrases describing place or location - using common prepositions (such as ‘in’, ‘on’, ‘at’) (VCEALL105)
• Respond appropriately in a range of common social and classroom situations - borrowing key topic words and question structures to help formulate responses (VCEALC084)
• Initiate and maintain simple conversations with others - borrowing words from questions asked (VCEALA091)
• Regularly use correct personal and possessive pronouns (VCEALL106)
• Respond appropriately in a range of common social and classroom situations - responding with short extended responses including answering questions (VCEALC084)
• Use a small range of common verb forms accurately - beginning to use basic modal verbs, such as ‘want to’, ‘have to’, ‘should’ (VCEALL103)
• Use words learnt from a range of classroom and social contexts - using a range of words related to familiar topics (VCEALL108)
• Repeat or modify a sentence or phrase, modelling rhythm, intonation and pronunciation on the speech of others (VCEALL109)
• Demonstrate active listening and follow speech - displaying appropriate body language while listening, including body orientation, eye contact, facial expression, nodding or shaking head (VCEALC083)
• Combine known formulas, structures and other vocabulary to communicate (VCEALL100)
• Construct a small range of sentence forms (VCEALL101)
• Apply some grammatical rules but may overgeneralise (much/many) (VCEALL102)
• Express simple negation correctly - expressing simple negation using common auxiliary verbs in full and contracted forms, such as ‘can’t/cannot’ (VCEALL104)

Possible next steps for this student’s learning

• Continue to participate in classroom discussions about familiar topics or new topics that are well supported by visual material and/or scaffolding provided by the teacher, building ability to negotiate learning situations using language appropriate to the situation (VCEALC085)
• Continue to practise constructing compound sentences using ‘because’ and ‘so’ (VCEALL101)
• Explicitly teach use of much/many (VCEALL102)
• Continue to practise the use of modal verbs to increase independence (VCEALL103)

Pathways and transitions considerations

A student who has achieved the A2 standard consistently in all three language modes may be able to transition to the English curriculum if they are:

• capable of meeting the learning expectations in the English curriculum at the level taught to their peers, and without substantial language support
• sufficiently proficient in understanding and using academic language to participate in learning activities across the curriculum
• capable of understanding and using the academic English of the curriculum in subsequent years without substantial language support, when the cognitive and linguistic demands of the curriculum increase.

At the end of Year 2, students who are working within the A2 range transition to Pathway B in Year 3. Students who have achieved the A2 standard may transition to Pathway B or the English curriculum, depending on what is developmentally appropriate for the individual learner.