About this resource:
The nature of learners
At this stage, children are developing cognitive and social capabilities that allow for increased control of their own learning. They are able to conceptualise and reason, and have better memory and focus. This is a stage of social experimentation, with children referencing themselves against their peers. They are more independent and less egocentric, enjoying both competitive and cooperative activities. They benefit from varied, activity-based learning, which builds on their interests and capabilities and makes connections with other areas of learning.
Hindi language learning and use
Children interact with peers and the teacher in classroom routines and a variety of learning experiences and activities. They engage in a lot of listening, and build oral proficiency through the provision of rich language input and opportunities to engage in communicative activities where grammatical forms and language features are purposefully integrated. The language they use and hear is authentic with some modification. Vocabulary is familiar and and structures are simple. Children follow instructions, exchange simple information and express ideas and feelings related to their personal worlds. They negotiate interactions and activities and participate in shared tasks, performance and play. They read and create short texts on topics relevant to their interests and enjoyment, such as family, pets, favourite activities or food. They continue to build vocabulary that relates to a wider range of domains, such as areas of the curriculum that involve some specialised language use. The language used in routine activities is re-used and reinforced from lesson to lesson in different situations, making connections between what has been learnt and what is to be learnt.
Contexts of interaction
The contexts in which students interact in learning and using Hindi are primarily local: the classroom, school, home and community, with some access to wider communities of Hindi speakers and resources through virtual and digital technology. The development of oral proficiency is similar in many ways to their parallel development of English language and literacy and continues to rely on rich language input in different modes and from different sources.
Texts and resources
Learners engage primarily with a variety of teacher-generated materials, stories, songs, puppet shows and games, and with materials produced for young Hindi learners such as computer language games, cards and readers. They may also have access to materials developed for children in India and other Hindi-speaking regions of the world, such as television programs, advertisements or web pages, as a means of broadening cultural knowledge and awareness of diversity of language experience.
Features of Hindi language use
Children recognise and apply elements of Hindi grammar, such as the use of tenses, गया था, जाऊँगा, जा रहा हूँ, खाया था, खा रहा हूँ, खाऊँगा, possessive adjectives to express ownership, मेरी पुस्तक, तुम्हारा बस्ता, and pronouns for places and objects, यहाँ, वहाँ, यह, वह. They understand the use of constructions related to compulsion, conditional sentences and compound verbs to indicate capabilities or completion of actions. Children’s development of literacy skills progresses from supported comprehension and use of familiar and personally significant sight words to working with more elaborated texts that take account of context, purpose and audience. The development of reading skills and textual knowledge is supported through interaction with a range of spoken, written, visual and multimodal texts. Imaginative and interactive texts, such as picture books, rhymes, stories, puppet play, songs and games, engage the expressive and cultural dimensions of language. Procedural, informative and descriptive texts, such as negotiated classroom rules, tuckshop orders or family and class profiles, show how language is used to ‘get things done’. A balance between language knowledge and language use is established by integrating focused attention to grammar, vocabulary building, pronunciation, and non-verbal and cultural dimensions of language use with communicative and purposeful learning activity.
Children talk about differences and similarities they notice between Hindi, English and other languages they know, and also between cultural behaviours and ways of communicating.
Learning Hindi in school contributes to the process of making sense of the children’s worlds which characterises this stage of development. Children are increasingly aware that the Hindi language is used not only in their own community in Australia and in India, but also in many other places around the world. As they engage consciously with differences between languages and cultures, they make comparisons and consider differences and possibilities in ways of communicating in different languages. This leads them to explore concepts of identity and difference, to think about cultural and linguistic diversity, and about what it means to speak more than one language in the contemporary world.
Level of support
This stage of learning involves continued extensive support. Form-focused activities build children’s grammatical knowledge and develop accuracy and control in spoken and written Hindi; opportunities to apply this knowledge in meaningful learning experiences build communicative skills, confidence and fluency. Tasks are carefully scaffolded: teachers provide models and examples; introduce language, concepts and resources needed to manage and complete the activity; make time for experimentation, drafting and redrafting; and provide support for self-monitoring and reflection.
The role of English
The teacher and learners use Hindi wherever possible in classroom interactions and learning activities. English is used for discussion, reflection and explanation when appropriate, for example, when considering the nature and relationship of language and culture, or in tasks which involve bilingual work that includes comparison and analysis of Hindi and English. Discussion in Hindi and English supports learning, develops children’s conceptual frames and builds metalanguage for talking about language and culture systems. The process of moving between languages consolidates their already established sense of what it means to be bilingual or multilingual and provides opportunities for reflection on the experience of living interculturally in intersecting language communities.
About this record:
http://rdf.australiancurriculum.edu.au/elements/2018/05/072e19e8-6063-4ecf-aea0-98a6a0fee10f.rdf