LOTE
Learning a Language Other Than English

• Introduces students to other languages as a means of accessing other people's ideas and ways of thinking;
• Inspires interest in and respect for other cultures;
• Intersects with a range of communication technologies;
• Develops an array of transferable skills that support other areas of the curriculum.

Students by the end of the Beginner Stage:

• Acquire the building blocks of the LOTE in terms of its basic verbal (and non-verbal) and written forms.
• Understand and apply these forms in 'meaningful and purposeful texts' in simple, highly familiar contexts.
• Begin to recognise that the LOTE operates in terms of 'logical' structures and patterns.
• Use modelled or rehearsed language, which they can manipulate somewhat to make meaning in new contexts.
• Use ICT as an integral component of their learning to inquire, create and communicate in the LOTE.
• Are introduced, through such texts and contexts, to the phenomenon of similarity and difference between languages and cultures and understand that this phenomenon informs cultural communication.

Students at the Elementary Stage:

• Expand their repertoire to gradually more complex texts - covering a broader range of still mostly familiar topics, revisiting aspects of what has been previously learned.
• Analyse the basic characteristics of such texts (spoken and written) and explore the impact of language choices of factors such as context, purpose and audience.
• Acquire aspects of the language necessary for participating in the interactive language classroom and engaging appropriately with other speakers of their LOTE.
• Demonstrate an emerging grasp of register and cultural conventions.
• Develop a repertoire for asking for assistance and negotiating original meaning.
• Use the potential that ICT provide to inquire, create and communicate in the LOTE.
• Understand that intercultural competence and knowledge of languages and cultures allow for exploration of different ways of experiencing and acting in the world.