WACE Italian Background Language ATAR study guide
WACE Italian Background Language ATAR · Work through your exam, one topic at a time.
The WACE Italian: Background Language ATAR is a Western Australian senior-secondary course and external examination for Year 12 students who already have substantial prior exposure to Italian, typically through family, community or overseas schooling. It sits within the Languages learning area of the Western Australian Certificate of Education, which is administered by the School Curriculum and Standards Authority (SCSA). The WACE Italian Background Language ATAR study guide has 4 sections and about 1,614 words.
01Exchange and Communication: Register, Function and Formula
Exchange and communication asks you to recognise and produce Italian that does something : apologising, requesting, persuading, negotiating, complaining, inviting. The examiner rewards control of register (formal Lei vs informal tu ), speech function (what the utterance is doing), and formulaic language (fixed phrases such as Le sarei grato se… , Mi scusi per il disturbo , Che ne dici di…?
387 words, about 2 min02Understanding and Interpreting Texts: Skimming, Inference and Text Type
This domain assesses comprehension of written and spoken Italian texts - articles, letters, advertisements, dialogues, literary extracts - and your ability to locate information , infer meaning , and identify purpose, audience and tone . Questions rarely reward word-by-word translation; they reward strategic reading.
394 words, about 2 min03Producing Texts: Structure, Cohesion and Accuracy
Producing texts requires you to write in a specified format (email, article, letter, diary entry, review, short essay) for a specified audience and purpose , within a word limit. Marks come from three places: task fulfilment (all bullet points covered, right register), cohesion and range (varied connectives, rich lexis, complex sentences), and accuracy (agreement, tense, spelling, accents).
417 words, about 2 min04Culture and Identity: Contemporary Italy and Italian Australia
Culture and identity asks you to discuss contemporary Italian society and the Italian presence in Australia in Italian, showing knowledge and the ability to compare and evaluate. Typical topics: family structures, regional identity, north–south differences, migration (internal and outward), food culture, religion and secularisation, youth and work, sport, media, and the history of Italian migration to Australia since the nineteenth century and especially the post-war decades.
416 words, about 2 min