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Why Take a Language Subject in Year 11 and Year12 ?

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What subjects to choose at high school is a big decision for high school students and parents. Why take a language subject at high school? We heard many people asked.

As an educator, we believe there are three principles of how to choose the high school objects:

  1. Your interest: Choose the subject you like the most. This is the 1st priority.
  2. Your career: Choose the subject that links to your future career. Think about what you want to be in 10 years.
  3. Your skills: Choose the subject that will give you the skills, the skill that will last long.

Language meets the above criteria as below:

  1. Learnin a Language is fun: learning a forieng language has a lot of fun. It might be a little bit boring at the begining, but the more you learn and understand the more interesting it becomes. If you are interested in make new friends, travelling overseas, read books, watching movies or playing games, a new language will help you. As Federico Fellini said “A different language is a different vision of life.”
  2. Language helps your career: No matter what you like to do in the future, lanuage can help. There are many jobs that require a language skill. International business, law, diplomate, teacher, interpretor and translater to mention a few. Other jobs may not require language skill directly, however, “Learning another language is not only learning different words for the same things, but learning another way to think about things.” (Flora Lewis).
  3. Language skill will company you the whole life: In the fast moving modern society, many skills you learn today will be outdated in a couple of years. However, the language does not change so quickly. The longer you learn the better you will be. As a Chinese proverb says “Language is a treasure that will follow its owner everywhere.”

Some facts about choose a language subject at Australian high school at their senior years:

  1. High achiving students in capital cities intend to choose a language subject in year 11 and year 12.
  2. Girls are more motivated to learn a language. More girls take a language subject in year 11 and year 12 then boys.
  3. In Australia, the students who choose language subject are decreasing (only 10% of year 12 students study a language in 2019), while in the world there are more people start langauge study during the lockdown.
  4. The top three languages taught in Australia year 11 and year 12 are: Chinese (22%), Japanese (20%) and French (18%).

What are the benefit to choose a language in year 11 and year 12?

The most direct benefit of learning a langauge is to increase your ATAR rank. For details, please read ATAR and Languages (languagetutor.local).

What language should you choose?

Choose the top two languages: Mandarin or Japanese. For more information, please read Learn a language in 2020 (languagetutor.local).

How to learn Mandartin and Japanese?

The easiest way to learn Mandarin or Japanese is to join a Chinese class or Japanese class offered by your school. If your school does not offer Chinese class or Japanese class you can choose online study.

We have helped many high school students improve their Chinese and Japanese language scores at school. We also helped many high school passed HSK (Chinese Language Profiency Test) and JLPT (Japanese Language Proficiency Test).

Read more about How to prepare HSK? (languagetutor.local) and How to pass JLPT N5? (languagetutor.local).

If you need more help, please book a free online consultation.

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