Auslan

By the end of Level 6, students discuss aspects of their daily lives, social activities and school experience and respond to each other’s comments. They describe relationships and characteristics of people and objects and express feelings and preferences, for example, POSS1 FRIEND CHANGE OTHER SCHOOL PRO1 SAD. They negotiate with each other to plan, organise and complete learning tasks and activities, using statements such as PRO1 DON’T-WANT DRAW, PRO1 WANT TAKE-PHOTO, THANKYOU PRO2 EXPLAIN CLEAR, or THAT FIRST IMPORTANT THAT SECOND. They follow more complex instructions and directions involving several steps. They compare experiences, routines, interests and activities, using signs associated with time, sequence and location. They follow protocols when interacting with each other or...

By the end of Level 6, students discuss aspects of their daily lives, social activities and school experience and respond to each other’s comments. They describe relationships and characteristics of people and objects and express feelings and preferences, for example, POSS1 FRIEND CHANGE OTHER SCHOOL PRO1 SAD. They negotiate with each other to plan, organise and complete learning tasks and activities, using statements such as PRO1 DON’T-WANT DRAW, PRO1 WANT TAKE-PHOTO, THANKYOU PRO2 EXPLAIN CLEAR, or THAT FIRST IMPORTANT THAT SECOND. They follow more complex instructions and directions involving several steps. They compare experiences, routines, interests and activities, using signs associated with time, sequence and location. They follow protocols when interacting with each other or with interpreters or visitors to the classroom, for example by interrupting conversations appropriately or providing context for a new participant joining a conversation. They paraphrase the content of selected signed texts, such as community announcements, and relay the information to others. They plan, rehearse and deliver short presentations, taking into account context, purpose and audience. They respond to creative and imaginative texts, for example by discussing ideas and characters, shadowing signed elements of theatrical or cinematographic texts that use handshapes, and by making connections with their own experiences. They create or reinterpret simple imaginative texts using elements of constructed action (CA), such as body shift, eye gaze and head orientation change. They modify non-manual features and lexical signs to indicate manner. They translate familiar texts from Auslan to English and vice versa, identifying which words or phrases require interpretation or explanation.

Students discriminate between body-anchored and non-body-anchored signs, and recognise how non-body-anchored signs can modify their locations meaningfully. They know that the function of CA is to represent the words, thoughts or actions of a protagonist in a text, either themselves or others, and that spatial relationships between objects are typically expressed with depicting signs in Auslan. They understand different ways that English words are borrowed into Auslan and identify connections between Auslan and other signed languages, for example, BSL, ISL and ASL. They recognise the diversity of Auslan users in the community, including people who are deaf, hard of hearing, and hearing people such as CODAs or interpreters.

Students recognise how Auslan has been transmitted across generations and describe different ways it has been documented and recorded, for example, by glossing and the use of technology such as ELAN. Students reflect on the ways culture is differently interpreted by others, for example by identifying how stereotypes about deaf and hearing people influence perceptions.