Outcome 3
Express ideas through the production of original imaginative written texts.
Details of the assessment task
A 1400- to 1600-ji imaginative written piece.
Step 1: Define the parameters of the assessment task and its related options
The
VCE Japanese First Language Study Design provides details of the key knowledge and skills related to Unit 3 Outcome 3 and the area of study. In order to plan and conduct an assessment for this task it is necessary to be familiar with the key knowledge and skills. It should be noted that each key aspect of the knowledge and skills does not need to be individually identifiable in the task, nor should the task focus on too narrow a range of key knowledge and skills.
The study design identifies the task that must be used to assess this part of the course. Teachers should be familiar with the essential requirements of each task.
This task may be completed under teacher supervision in 80 minutes of class time. Students may use dictionaries. (Note: teachers can decide on the optimum time for the task; 80 minutes is used in this example.)
Step 2: Determine teaching and learning activities
Teachers need to unpack and become familiar with the performance descriptors because they provide a clear indication of qualities and characteristics that they are looking for in a student response.
When deciding on the theme, topic and subtopic for the teaching and learning associated with this outcome, reference must be made to the
VCE Japanese First Language Study Design. The subtopic must allow for the development of an appropriate sequence of teaching, learning and assessment. Teachers should plan a sequence of teaching and learning activities that will enable students to develop appropriate and necessary knowledge and skills. The teaching and learning activities should be designed to develop, maintain and extend student proficiency in all of the macro skills – listening, speaking, reading, writing and viewing.
Students can work with information from written, spoken and / or visual texts. They should be able to see examples of writing, styles, text types and ideas in the texts. Suitable stimulus texts could include extracts, articles, blogs, webpages, postcards, stories, podcasts, songs, plays, news items, films, photographs and maps.
The skills and knowledge required for the successful demonstration of this task must relate to the specific subtopic chosen. For example, vocabulary and structures should build on previous learning, and reflect and extend those needed by students to participate in activities related to the subtopic.
Activities designed to elicit the students’ understanding and use of the skills and knowledge required for this task should be included: for example, learning activities that progressively develop their ability to identify the meaning and specific linguistic detail from the selected texts. Students will also need to extend their skills in conveying relevant information in Japanese and using linguistic forms that support the production of imaginative writing.
Students may be given revision exercises and activities in preparation for the assessment task.
Step 3: Design the assessment task
One approach to preparing students for the assessment task for Unit 3 Outcome 3 is outlined below, based on the theme of Tradition and change in Japanese-speaking communities, with the topic of Youth issues and the subtopic of Significant experiences.
For this assessment task, teachers should provide students with one or more tasks that will allow them to produce a 1400- to 1600-ji imaginative piece of writing. When offering a range of choices for the same task, teachers should ensure that the options are of comparable scope and demand. The tasks should come from work completed in class and be based on knowledge and skills developed on the chosen subtopic over a period of class time and / or homework.
In order to prepare for this task, teachers need to develop tasks that specify that the response must be written in an imaginative style and in the specified text type, and for a specified audience. Appropriate text types for all styles of writing are published in the
VCE Japanese First Language Study Design, and teaching and learning activities that lead to this assessment task should cover, discuss and showcase the most appropriate range of text types that will allow for imaginative writing to take place: for example, a short story for a school magazine or a writing competition.
Students should not have seen any of the tasks previously, although they may be similar to ones provided for previously completed work.
Allocation of marks: This task is worth 20 marks towards the total of 50 marks allocated to School-assessed Coursework for Unit 3.
The teacher must decide the most appropriate time to set this task and inform the students of this date / time. This decision is the result of several considerations including:
- the estimated time it will take to teach the key knowledge and skills for the task
- the likely length of time required for students to complete the task
- when tasks are being conducted in other subjects and the workload implications for students.
Where there are multiple classes in Japanese First Language, a common School-assessed Coursework schedule is advisable.
Duration of task: This sample task is designed to be completed in class under teacher supervision in an 80-minute lesson.
Materials: Students may use a monolingual and / or bilingual dictionary in the completion of this task. Their responses will be written on the assessment task sheet and submitted at the end of the session.
Student responses: In order to successfully demonstrate the skills and knowledge required for this outcome, the task should allow students the opportunity to demonstrate knowledge of the ideas and concepts related to the selected subtopic. The task should allow students to provide an original piece of writing in an imaginative style in the specified text type.
The task should be unambiguous and all instructions should be clear.
Marking the task: The marking scheme used to assess a student’s level of performance should reflect the relevant aspects of the performance descriptors and be explained to students before they begin the task.
Example of steps in preparing students for the assessment task:
- Introduce the topic of ‘significant experiences’ to the class and brainstorm to decide which experiences are significant to young people and what makes them significant.
- Each student relays to the class an important experience of their own or one they have heard about from a friend or family member. They include reasons why such an experience is particularly significant to young people.
- Students read articles or online blogs about similar significant experiences and discuss what makes them appropriate to this subtopic. They complete comprehension exercises about them.
- Reinforce any work completed in Units 1 and 2 on imaginative writing OR begin an exploration of the genre of imaginative writing. Students find examples of their favourite imaginative writing (for example, extracts from novels, video game back-stories, short stories or blogs). They annotate these examples to highlight types of language used to create strong imaginative atmospheres. They also annotate structural techniques used to enable the ‘story’ to be told effectively.
- Discuss and describe a variety of text types used for imaginative writing.
Outcome 1
Analyse and use information from written and viewed texts.
Details of the assessment task
Written responses to specific questions or instructions analysing and using information provided from the texts.
Step 1: Define the parameters of an outcome and its related assessment task options
The
VCE Japanese First Language Study Design provides details of the key knowledge and skills related to Unit 4 Outcome 1 and the area of study. In order to plan and conduct an assessment for this outcome it is necessary to be familiar with the key knowledge and skills. It should be noted that each key aspect of the knowledge and skills does not need to be individually identifiable in the task, nor should the task focus on too narrow a range of key knowledge and skills.
The study design identifies the task that must be used to assess this outcome. Teachers should be familiar with the essential requirements of each task.
This task may be completed under teacher supervision in 80 minutes of class time. Students may use dictionaries. (Note: teachers can decide on the optimum time for the task; 80 minutes is used in this example.)
Step 2: Determine teaching and learning activities
Teachers need to unpack and become familiar with the performance descriptors because they provide a clear indication of qualities and characteristics that they are looking for in a student response.
When deciding on the theme, topic and subtopic for the teaching and learning associated with this outcome, reference must be made to the
VCE Japanese First Language Study Design. The subtopic must allow for the development of an appropriate sequence of teaching, learning and assessment of the outcome. Teachers should plan a sequence of teaching and learning activities that will enable students to develop knowledge and skills. The teaching and learning activities should be designed to develop, maintain and extend student proficiency in all of the macro skills – listening, speaking, reading, writing and viewing.
Students will synthesise information from written and viewed texts. They will connect and compare ideas and identify different points of view in the texts. Suitable texts could include extracts, articles, blogs, webpages, postcards, stories, plays, news items, films, photographs and maps.
The skills and knowledge required for the successful demonstration of this outcome must relate to the specific subtopic chosen. For example, vocabulary and structures should build on previous learning, and reflect and extend those needed by students to participate in activities related to the subtopic.
Activities designed to elicit the students’ understanding and use of the skills and knowledge required for this outcome should be included: for example, learning activities that progressively develop their ability to identify the overall meaning and specific detail from the selected texts. Students will also need to extend their skills in conveying relevant information in Japanese.
Students may be given revision exercises and activities in preparation for the assessment task.
Step 3: Design the assessment task
One approach to preparing students for the assessment task for Unit 4 Outcome 1 is outlined below, based on the theme of The world around us, with the topic of Studies of Australia and the subtopic of Migration of Japanese speakers to Australia.
For this assessment task, students could read an article about the migrant experience from Japan, and view photographs of a migrant’s life in Japan and now in Australia. Students extract information from the texts and then respond to specific questions in Japanese. Students have 80 minutes in which to respond to all of the questions.
In order to prepare for this task, teachers need to provide the written text and the photos that will be used as stimulus materials. The teacher develops the task and students should not have seen the task previously.
Allocation of marks: This task is worth 20 marks towards the total of 50 marks allocated to School-assessed Coursework for Unit 4.
The teacher must decide the most appropriate time to set this task and inform the students of this date / time. This decision is the result of several considerations including:
- the estimated time it will take to teach the key knowledge and skills for the outcome
- the likely length of time required for students to complete the task
- when tasks are being conducted in other subjects and the workload implications for students.
Where there are multiple classes in Japanese First Language, a common School-assessed Coursework schedule is advisable.
Duration of task: This sample task is designed to be completed in class under teacher supervision in an 80-minute lesson.
Materials: Students may use a monolingual and / or bilingual dictionary in the completion of this task. Their responses will be written on the assessment task sheet and submitted at the end of the session.
Student responses: In order to successfully demonstrate the skills and knowledge required for this outcome, the task should allow students to demonstrate knowledge of the ideas and concepts related to the selected subtopic. The task should allow students to interpret information from the texts using Japanese and identify main points as well as specific details. The task should also require students to connect and compare ideas and identify different points of view. Students need to link ideas and information from the texts in a logical way. The task may be a series of questions, some of which require paragraph responses or short answers; as well as a longer task requiring students to rework information from all the stimulus texts into, for example, a short email or article.
The task should be unambiguous and all instructions should be clear.
Marking the task: The marking scheme used to assess a student’s level of performance should reflect the relevant aspects of the performance descriptors and be explained to students before they begin the task.
Example of steps in preparing students for the assessment task:
- Introduce the topic of migration and explore some of the reasons why people might leave Japan to come to Australia.
- Ask each student about their own, or their family’s, experience of migration.
- Develop a vocabulary database and list of expressions relevant to this topic in Japanese.
- Read articles or blog posts about migrants and discuss what makes them similar and / or different. Complete comprehension exercises about them.
- Watch a documentary about migration to Australia. Assist students in how to take notes in a meaningful way while viewing, and how to organise their notes for later use.
- Visit Melbourne’s Immigration Museum (in reality or virtually) to seek out statistics and look at exhibitions about the general migrant experience as well as specific experiences of people migrating from Japan.
- Based on all that they have read, seen and heard in this area of study, each student creates a PowerPoint presentation to present to the class, or writes a short article, on a specific aspect of migration.
- Reinforce effective ways of approaching comprehension exercises:
- What are the best ways to find key points in any text?
- What is the best way to summarise a text?
- What are the best ways to ‘read’ a question in order to address every aspect of it?
- How can you transform information from several text types into another type?
- How can you write about a text in your own words without simply ‘copying’ it?
- What are the best ways to glean information from images?
- How can you make links with the ideas from the written and viewed texts presented? What is an effective way to show how they are linked?
- Students complete several styles of comprehension question-and-answer exercises in class or as homework. Students are timed doing this to prepare themselves for the assessment task because it has to be completed within a time limit.