Proficiency Goals

The Chinese team at Abbotsford Primary School has developed a unique Chinese curriculum for the bilingual program, as inspired by the English as Additional Language (EAL) model.

Over the 7 years of primary schooling, students are expected to make a conceptually equivalent progress from Level A1 to B2, as per the Victorian Curriculum for EAL.

Similarly, benchmarks have also been established for character recognition, character production and vocabulary/grammar development (as measured by the requirements for Young Learners Chinese Test (YCT), the official Chinese government-run proficiency test requirements for school-aged students):

Years	Equivalent EAL Level	Character Recognition	Character Production	YCT Level
F - 2	A1	100 (+ pinyin)	80	1
3 - 4	B1	240	160	2
5 - 6	B2	600	300	3

For reference: VCE Chinese (Second Language) in Year 12 requires students to be able to recognise and produce 500 characters.

Please note:

The focus of F-2 Curriculum is on oral language development. Rigorous written language development starts from Year 3.
The proficiency goals above do not apply for students who are heritage speakers of Chinese. For heritage speakers, our Curriculum Leader - Chinese will develop a unique individual learning plan with the Chinese classroom teacher to ensure that the students are given appropriate learning materials to ensure they continue to develop their proficiency in Chinese from the level of proficiency they already have. For benchmarking purposes, Children's Chinese Competency Certificate (CCCC), the official Taiwanese government-run proficiency test is used.