At Echidna level, students work towards using spoken and written Chinese in simple personal interactions with familiar participants about self, family, people, places, routine, school life, and their own interests and preferences, for example, 你叫什么名字？ 你上几年级？ 你有狗吗？ 你喜欢什么运动？ They learn to use appropriate pronunciation, tone, gesture and movement and some formulaic expressions. They learn to use modelled questions to develop responses, for example, 你的哥哥几岁？， 他是谁？， 你住在哪里？， 这是什么？ They work towards to responding to and creating simple informative and imaginative texts by selecting learnt words and characters. They learn short sentences and follow the basic subject–verb–object structure with occasional use of adjective predicates, for example, 这是红色的苹果. They learn to present familiar words in Pinyin or in characters in texts. Numbers are used in relation to age and family members, and to quantify objects with measure words such as 一个男生，两个姐姐，三只狗.

Students learn to explain why Chinese is a globally important language. They learn to understand that Pinyin provides access to the sounds of the spoken language. They learn to identify features of the Chinese writing system, including the range of strokes and their sequences in character writing, and explain how component knowledge can assist in learning characters. They become aware that each character is a meaningful unit that is used to make up words. They learn to recognise familiar word order in Chinese sentences and recognise that languages change with time and due to influences. They learn to notice how cultural differences may affect understanding between people.