Languages Domain

The Oral Examinations: Chinese, Japanese and French

Students undertaking a second language study are accustomed to challenges. On a daily basis, they decode, memorise, interpret, translate, analyse, reflect and discover. They communicate with others, make connections and think deeply and creatively. They demonstrate patience, resilience, stamina, open-mindedness, endeavour and creativity. Most importantly, they demonstrate courage in their willingness to reach out to others, take risks and make mistakes.

Yet as brave as second language learners are, there is one event that still manages to shake their nerves- the VCE oral examination.

Every year, our second language students rise to the challenge of speaking entirely in a foreign language for 15 minutes; answering questions, putting forward opinions, defending ideas and discussing their research on cultural and historical topics.

They must overcome their dread of forgetting words, their fear of unknown questions from the two external examiners, their sense of trepidation of how they will be rewarded for their many hours of hard work and preparation.

So, we celebrate and congratulate all our language students for taking up this challenge. and for their wonderful achievements. We promise our future students that there are rewards for those who dare…

In the words of some members of the language classes of 2021:

The oral exam was scary but exciting. It’s a great experience and you meet so many new people doing it…Don’t be intimidated and enjoy it.
It was a very exciting and fast experience and after a long year of practice and learning it was very satisfying to finally complete the oral.
The oral exam made me feel quite nervous leading up to it. I was very grateful for all of the practice and preparation with our teachers and language assistant as it prepared me for the conditions of the exam. Immediately after the exam finished, it felt like a huge weight had been lifted off of my shoulders and I was very thankful for it to be over.
The oral exam is very daunting but when you're in there it feels amazing to be able to engage in an advanced conversation in another language and see all your 6 years of learning come together and pay off.

Kate Hindell

French Teacher

Year 9 Masterchef France Challenge

To complete our food unit in Year 9 French, students enjoyed creating their own cooking video in a Masterchef France challenge.

We discovered the amazing talents of Koonung students in the kitchen. They were skillful, well-organised, creative, spontaneous and thoroughly engaging. We were extremely proud of their achievements, and their willingness to share their recipes and cooking skills with a wider audience.

We would have loved to have shared all submissions, as all were extremely well produced and entertaining. But we hope you enjoy a glimpse of our Master Chefs in action.

At the end of last term and the start of this term we have been learning about French cooking and the names of different ingredients and kitchen utensils in French. To put our learning into practice, we watched the French comedy film Le Chef, and then did our own French Masterchef, each choosing a recipe and translating it into French. We filmed ourselves cooking and explaining the process in French. This was a fun way to practice good pronunciation and sentence structure during online school, where it is a lot harder to work on these skills. I think this was a really fun assignment because we got to learn French vocabulary that we might be able to use in real life, and I also found filming and editing the video fun.

Darcey Gifford 9D

The French Masterchef challenge was an amazing experience. The task was simple: find a dish, write a recipe for it in French, and shoot a video of you making the dish while speaking the recipe. The challenge was engaging and fun but also taught me a great deal of French vocabulary, ranging from words like "préchauffer" meaning preheat, to words like "blancs" meaning egg whites. On top of that, we started our food unit with the hilarious movie "Comme un Chef" to give us a headstart on vocabulary. Overall, this challenge was great fun and gave me even more of a reason to expand my French in the years to come.

Ryan Kodila 9A

Darcey Gifford

Ryan Kodila

Paisley Gaskell

Daniel Panchmatia

Maia Mendez

Lucas Greuter

Kate Hindell

French Teacher