SACE Stage 2 Italian (beginners) cheat sheet

Internal assessment in Stage 2 Italian (Beginners) is school-based and counts for 70% of the final subject grade; the external examination contributes the remaining 30%.

The internal component is made up of an Interactive Oral (conversation in Italian, typically 10 minutes) and a Series of Tasks or Folio covering the four macro-skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing.

Interactive Oral: assessed on communication, interaction and range/accuracy of language; students must sustain a two-way conversation, ask and answer questions, and negotiate meaning in Italian.

Folio/Series of Tasks: each task is marked against performance standards with five grades (A–E); the school's marks are moderated externally against the standards.

Performance standards describe five levels of achievement (A to E); A is 'excellent', B 'good', C 'competent', D 'developing', E 'emerging' - descriptors refer to knowledge, skills and understanding of the topic.

Topics for Beginners level centre on the personal world: self and family, school and daily routine, leisure and hobbies, food, holidays and travel, and the local community.

Written tasks require use of present, perfect (passato prossimo) and near future (futuro semplice or stare per + infinitive) tenses, appropriate articles, and agreement of adjectives with nouns.

Assessment evidence must be collected under supervised conditions where required; drafts and redrafts are permitted only as specified in the school's assessment plan, and plagiarism rules apply.

The external examination is worth 30% of the final grade and is set and marked by the SACE Board; it assesses listening, reading and writing in Italian.

The examination paper typically has three sections: listening comprehension, reading comprehension, and a written response (short answer or extended response in Italian).

Listening section: passages are played twice; questions are answered in English or Italian depending on the question instruction, and responses must be based only on the audio.

Reading section: authentic or adapted Italian texts (e.g. notices, emails, articles, advertisements) with questions testing main idea, detail, inference and vocabulary in context.

Written response: students produce a text (e.g. message, email, short article, diary entry) of around 100–150 words in Italian, using the required text type and register.

Marking uses performance standards with criteria for communication, content, and language accuracy (grammar, vocabulary, spelling, punctuation).

Time allocation is typically around 2 hours plus reading time; dictionaries are not permitted in the examination room.

Key grammar assessed: present tense of regular and common irregular verbs, passato prossimo with avere/essere and agreement, reflexives, direct/indirect object pronouns, comparatives and superlatives, and simple future.