Senior secondary
English course overview
Australia is a linguistically diverse country, with Standard Australian English as its national language.
Senior English recognises and promotes effective communication skills in Standard Australian English to enable individuals to share in and contribute to current and future local, national and global communities and cultures.
Senior English requires students to write, speak or sign, view, listen, and think critically. In studying literary and non-literary texts, and through creating their own texts, students will conceptualise, imagine, experiment, speculate, reflect, make decisions, hypothesise, analyse and evaluate.
Students will enhance their ability to think, use language, and create meaning through reflecting on their place in the world and expressing their ideas and feelings. They are encouraged to enjoy and appreciate texts, and to understand the power texts have to influence, tell stories of a culture and promote shared understandings.
In the senior phase of English, students will engage with a wide variety of texts. These will include:
- literature (novels, short stories and poetry) from a variety of cultures and from across history
- scripted drama and drama performed as theatre
- reflective texts such as biographies, autobiographies, journals and memoirs
- works produced for older adolescents, popular culture, media, multimodal and hypermedia texts (World Wide Web, film, documentary film and television programs)
- spoken and written everyday texts of work, family and community life.
English Communication course overview
In Australia, English is the principal spoken language and the predominant written language of personal and public life. Proficiency in and understanding of English allows people to share in and contribute to current and future local, national and global communities and cultures.
Effective communication is integral to our society. New technologies, the influences of globalisation and the restructured workplace require students to be able to interpret, construct and make judgments meanings in texts preparation for lifelong learning. The English Communication course is designed to allow students to develop and use these skills in the areas of work, community and leisure.
The concept of language and literacy as social practice is fundamental to this Study Area Specification. It is through texts that people express and share the vitality of cultures and communities; tell the stories of cultures; contribute to the shaping of personal, group and national identities; explore ideas and feelings that invite reflection on knowledge, values and practices; promote shared cultural understandings; and participate actively in communities. Students will utilise, manipulate and critically reflect on a range of texts in the contexts of work, community and leisure.
Course content includes the study of media and workplace-related texts and is aimed at enhancing the students’ chances of future employment or TAFE studies after Year 12. Practical communication skills for everyday life are examined and practised. Students will have the opportunity to work independently and collaboratively on a range of real-world tasks that draw from their own experiences.
Junior secondary
English course overview
The study of English is central to the learning and development of all young Australians. It helps create confident communicators, imaginative thinkers and informed citizens. It is through the study of English that individuals learn to analyse, understand, communicate with and build relationships with others and with the world around them. The study of English helps young people develop the knowledge and skills needed for education, training and the workplace. It helps them become ethical, thoughtful, informed and active members of society.
The Australian Curriculum: English encourages students to engage imaginatively and critically with literature to expand the scope of their experience. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have contributed to Australian society and to its contemporary literature, through their distinctive ways of representing and communicating knowledge, traditions and experience. The Australian Curriculum: English values, respects and explores this contribution.
In the junior phase of English, students will engage with a wide variety of texts. These will include:
- literature (novels, short stories and poetry) from a variety of cultures
- scripted drama
- reflective texts such as memoirs.
There is also a very strong emphasis placed upon the building of essential literacy skills in reading and writing. Students will have the opportunity to develop resilience and stamina in their study of English, through interacting with and producing extended written texts. Reading strategies are explicitly taught and developed through our use of the Reading to Learn program which caters for all ability levels.