PHSC LOTE

The world is full of languages! Around 6,000 of them in fact! So why limit it to just English? There’s no one answer. The benefits of learning a second language are numerous. Knowledge of another language and culture not only increases your career opportunities but broadens your horizons and enriches your life. More specifically a second language can benefit you in the following ways:
• Improve your English language skills
• Increase your understanding of how languages works
• Develop a different view of the world
• Connect with other cultures and know and appreciate your own better
• Enhance job opportunities
• Increase travel and overseas study opportunities
• Enjoy foreign literature, music and cinema in its original form.

LOTE at Princes Hill

PHSC offers French and Italian to VCE level. Teaching and learning a LOTE at Princes Hill is based on the communicative approach. This approach focuses on providing students with real life meaningful opportunities to speak, read, write and listen to the second language. The LOTE teaching team is enthusiastic and passionate about languages. Having all spent significant time in the target language countries, we are committed to the philosophy that Australian school children ought to have the opportunity to become fluent in a language other than English. We make use of authentic materials such as film, theatre, magazines and the print media to enhance the classroom environment. We also take advantage of our inner city location by regularly visiting the Italian precinct, Lygon Street, French patisseries and restaurants, and films and exhibitions at the nearby Melbourne Museum, Cinema Nova, Arts Centre, National Gallery, ACMI and the Immigration Museum. We currently have native speaker French and Italian language assistants working with our team.

French

French is one of the most widely used languages in the world. There are forty-nine countries throughout the world that either use French as their official, second or priority language. This represents one quarter of the world’s population. French is an official language of the United Nations and of more than fifty international organisations such as the Red Cross, UNESCO, Medecins sans frontiers, providing a range of employment opportunities for speakers of French.

French has been taught at Princes Hill for sixteen years and continues to be a popular study through to Year 12. Text books are used as a departure point only and include Allons-y 1 at 7 & 8, Tempo 1 at 9 & 10 and at Au Point VCE level.

Italian

Italy has a rich cultural history. Its lifestyle, art, food, wine, fashion, sporting events, architecture and scenic beauty attract some 60 million tourists each year. Several past Princes Hill students of Italian have gone on to work and study in Italy after their formal school experience.

In addition, since large waves of Italian migration into Australia in the early1940s, Italians have played and continue to play an important role in Australian society. It is estimated that around one million Australians speak Italian.

Italian has been taught at Princes Hill since the 1970s and continues to be popular study through to Year 12. Only a handful of our students have Italian backgrounds and in fact non Italian background students make up the majority of our classes. In Years 7 & 8 the textbook Forza is used, while in 9 & 10 the text is Ci Siamo and at VCE level Mc Cormick’s basic Italian Grammar.

Extension Programs
LOTE students participate annually in the Australian Language Certificates (ALC) as well as the Alliance Française and Dante Alighieri Poetry Competitions.

Princes Hill offers an extensive language study tour program which we believe is second to none in the state. The program includes a one week study program to New Caledonia for Years 8-10 French students, and three week study tours to Italy and France respectively, for middle school students. The study tour to Italy has been operating since 1998 while students will travel to France for the first time in 2006. See the language page links above for more detail.