Is it cheating?

[Roguedeth]

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If you are fluent in a second language and you take it anyways?

Do you feel dirty?

[sca]

If by fluent you mean you started learning in say, primary school, and worked very hard to become fluent - then no.

If by fluent you mean it's spoken at home, or you moved here at a young age so English is actually your second language, (etcetera) and the subject you're taking isn't really a second language - then yes, it's cheating.
Cos if the VCAA were aware of your situation they wouldn't let you study it as a "second" language.

[Gloamglozer]

That's why Chinese is split into 3 groups: "Chinese: First Language", "Chinese: Second Language Advanced" and "Chinese: Second Language". I do SL and it was a real pain filling out the application form because I had to fill out my education history, ie. where I was educated and which schools.

Do they do that for other languages as well?

Although, for some Chinese students, there are some who were born in Australia but speak Chinese at home so they may be fluent in the language but they are still regarded as "Second Language learners".

I think that's why up in NSW they've split Chinese students into more groups.

[moshi]

they split korean and japanese into 1st and 2nd language, so i think chinese is the only LOTE with three divisions
vcaa should seriously split vietnamese as well - so many vietnamese international students have a massive advantage over the students here whose second language is vietnamese!

[Gloamglozer]

Probably, but I think VCAA is just putting it off for the moment because maybe they've researched that there aren't a lot of Vietnamese students studying in Victoria.

Yes, Chinese is the only LOTE to have three divisions but a lot of teachers argue that there should be more divisions. For example, in the Second Language group, background and non-background students should be split to make it fairer.

[SmRandmAzn]

yeah LOTE is really unfair for non background speakers. Why would a non background speaker learn Chinese and get completely owned? no incentive. I do Jap, but there really aren't that many Jap people living in Australia which is nice.

[The Obscure]

I know that Italian lumps all the different people in one group. I think it's great that Chinese has the divisions. In my Italian class I was the only one who wasn't doing it at language school outside of normal school hours, who hadn't been to Italy to study or who hadn't had an Italian relative come from Italy to stay over to teach me.

It's very unbalanced but I guess it can be argued that if I just worked harder I could have become fluent.

[*Baby-K*]

You can always do Background Speakers course- that's what I did for Russian

[Gloamglozer]

I think the reason why they lump most languages in the one group is because of one major reason:

1. They aren't a lot of first language speakers in that particular language so there's no point wasting finances to split the LOTE into divisions.

Another reason, which could be a possibility is:

1. Perhaps the government or VCAA don't have the finances involved with splitting a lot of the LOTEs into divisions.

[Arabique]

Of course students may speak second languages at home, and may be fluent but remember there are different dialects as well.
Lots of Italians and Lebanese people speak dialects fluently and hence cannot communicate effectively in either of Italian or Arabic and hence will not get the marks.

It's very hard to judge on people's cultural/linguistic backgrounds, but if you know a language and you can get marks for it, then why not?