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• English | English: Learning in English

  Students develop knowledge, understanding and skills across the strands of Language, Literature and Literacy. Each strand contributes its own distinctive goals, body of knowledge, history of ideas and interests to the study of English. 

  Learning about and using language

  In the Language...

  Overview material | English

• English | English: Structure

  The English curriculum is organised by language modes and strands.

  Language Modes

  The language modes are interrelated and the learning in one often supports and extends learning of the others. Each content description has been placed in the mode which is the major focus of its learning.

  Classroom...

  Overview material | English

• English: Level 1 achievement standards - Reading and Viewing

  By the end of Level 1, students understand the different purposes of texts. They make connections to personal experience when explaining characters and main events in short texts. They identify that texts serve different purposes and that this affects how they are organised. They are able to read...

  Level description | English | Level 1 | Reading and Viewing

• English: Level 3 achievement standards - Reading and Viewing

  By the end of Level 3, students understand how content can be organised using different text structures depending on the purpose of the text. They understand how language features, images and vocabulary choices are used for different effects. They read texts that contain varied sentence structures...

  Level description | English | Level 3 | Reading and Viewing

• English: Level 7 achievement standards - Reading and Viewing

  By the end of Level 7, students understand how text structures can influence the complexity of a text and are dependent on audience, purpose and context. They demonstrate understanding of how the choice of language features, images and vocabulary affects meaning. They explain issues and ideas...

  Level description | English | Level 7 | Reading and Viewing

• English: Level A description

  In Level A, students begin to engage, participate and receive communication with known adults, teachers and peers. Opportunities are provided for students to explore English knowledge, understanding, skills and processes through everyday experiences, personal interests and significant events....

  Level description | English

• English: Level C achievement standards - Speaking and Listening

  Students listen to and interact with others. They use particular greetings to acknowledge people, respond with ‘yes’, ‘no’ or single words to indicate understanding and use a few words and simple phrases. They can share their favourite items or experience with a small group...

  Level description | English | Level C | Speaking and Listening

• VCELA024

  Use sounds and facial expressions to affect familiar others

  Elaborations

  • encountering various languages and forms of communication at home, school and in the community
  • experiencing others engaging, communicating and changing things in the world around them
  • reacting to the sounds and voices of familiar others
  • reacting to a range of gestures, signs, images and facial features of familiar others
  • using sounds, noises, gestures, eye gaze etc. to gain attention or request an object, e.g. reaching towards something they want
  • turning towards a communication partner

  VCELA024 | Curriculum content | English | Level A | Speaking and Listening | Language

• VCELA025

  Respond to a familiar person and engage with them

  Elaborations

  • being exposed to individuals interpreting their actions and sounds
  • experiencing people reacting and engaging with each other and them
  • learning to control their behaviour, e.g. moving, making sounds,
  • making eye contact, sound or gesture towards a familiar other during a communicative process
  • gaining another’s attention through sounds and or action
  • communicating physical need, for example hungry or tired through sounds and/or action

  VCELA025 | Curriculum content | English | Level A | Speaking and Listening | Language

• VCELA236

  Identify language that can be used for appreciating texts and the qualities of people and things

  Elaborations

  • exploring how language is used to express feelings including learning vocabulary to express a gradation of feeling, for example ‘happy’, ‘joyful’, ‘pleased’, ‘contented’
  • exploring in stories, everyday and media texts moral and social dilemmas; such as right and wrong, fairness/unfairness, inclusion and exclusion; learning to use language to describe actions and consider consequences
  • exploring how language is used to construct characters and settings in narratives, including choice of nouns such as ‘girl’, ‘princess’ or ‘orphan’, and choice of adjectives such as ‘gentle’, ‘timid’ or ‘frightened’

  VCELA236 | Curriculum content | English | Level 2 | Speaking and Listening | Language

• VCELA179

  Explore differences in words that represent people, places and things (nouns, including pronouns), happenings and states (verbs), qualities (adjectives) and details such as when, where and how (adverbs)

  Elaborations

  • talking about effective words that describe a place, person or event
  • learning how a sentence can be made more vivid by adding adjectives, adverbs and unusual verbs

  VCELA179 | Curriculum content | English | Level 1 | Reading and Viewing | Language

• VCELA224

  Understand how texts are made cohesive by the use of resources, including word associations, synonyms, and antonyms

  Elaborations

  • exploring how texts develop their themes and ideas, building information by connecting similar and contrasting dissimilar things
  • mapping examples of word associations in texts, for example words that refer to the main character

  VCELA224 | Curriculum content | English | Level 2 | Writing | Language

• VCELA270

  Understand that languages have different written and visual communication systems, different oral traditions and different ways of constructing meaning

  Elaborations

  • learning that a word or sign can carry different weight in different cultural contexts, for example that particular respect is due to some people and creatures and that stories can be passed on to teach us how to live appropriately

  VCELA270 | Curriculum content | English | Level 3 | Speaking and Listening | Language

• VCELA323

  Understand the difference between main and subordinate clauses and that a complex sentence involves at least one subordinate clause

  Elaborations

  • knowing that the function of complex sentences is to make connections between ideas, such as: to provide a reason (for example 'He jumped up because the bell rang.'), to state a purpose (for example 'She raced home in order to confront her brother.'), to express a condition (for example 'It will break if you push it.'), to make a concession (for example 'She went to work even though she was not feeling well.'), to link two ideas in terms of various time relations (for example 'Nero fiddled while Rome burned.')

  VCELA323 | Curriculum content | English | Level 5 | Writing | Language

• VCELA324

  Understand how noun groups/phrases and adjective groups/phrases can be expanded in a variety of ways to provide a fuller description of the person, place, thing or idea

  Elaborations

  • learning how to expand a description by combining a related set of nouns and adjectives – ‘Two old brown cattle dogs sat on the ruined front veranda of the deserted house’
  • observing how descriptive details can be built up around a noun or an adjective, forming a group/phrase (for example, ‘this very smelly cleaning cloth in the sink’ is a noun group/phrase and ‘as pretty as the flowers in May’ is an adjective group/phrase)

  VCELA324 | Curriculum content | English | Level 5 | Writing | Language

• VCELA351

  Understand how ideas can be expanded and sharpened through careful choice of verbs, elaborated tenses and a range of adverb groups/phrases

  Elaborations

  • knowing that verbs often represent actions and that the choice of more expressive verbs makes an action more vivid (for example 'She ate her lunch' compared to 'She gobbled up her lunch')
  • knowing that adverb groups/phrases and prepositional phrases can provide important details about a happening(for example, ‘At nine o'clock the buzzer rang loudly throughout the school’) or state (for example, ‘The tiger is a member of the cat family’)
  • knowing the difference between the simple present tense (for example 'Pandas eat bamboo.') and the simple past tense (for example 'She replied.')
  • knowing that the simple present tense is typically used to talk about either present states (for example, ‘He lives in Darwin’) or actions that happen regularly in the present (for example, ‘He watches television every night’) or that represent ‘timeless’ happenings, as in information reports (for example, ‘Bears hibernate in winter’)
  • knowing that there are various ways in English to refer to future time (for example 'She will call you tomorrow'; 'I am going to the movies tomorrow'; 'Tomorrow I leave for Hobart')

  VCELA351 | Curriculum content | English | Level 6 | Writing | Language

• VCELA350

  Investigate how complex sentences can be used in a variety of ways to elaborate, extend and explain ideas

  Elaborations

  • knowing that a complex sentence typically consists of a main clause and a subordinate clause
  • knowing that the function of complex sentences is to make connections between ideas, such as: to provide a reason (for example 'He jumped up because the bell rang'); to state a purpose (for example 'She raced home in order to confront her brother'); to express a condition (for example 'It will break if you push it'); to make a concession (for example 'She went to work even though she was not feeling well'); to link two ideas in terms of various time relations (for example 'Nero fiddled while Rome burned')

  VCELA350 | Curriculum content | English | Level 6 | Writing | Language

• VCELA428

  Investigate how evaluation can be expressed directly and indirectly using devices, including allusion, evocative vocabulary and metaphor

  Elaborations

  • comparing texts that use evaluative language in different ways – print advertisements, editorials, talkback radio and poetry – and identifying wordings that appraise things indirectly, through evocative language, similes and metaphors that direct the views of the readers in particular ways

  VCELA428 | Curriculum content | English | Level 9 | Reading and Viewing | Language

• VCELA452

  Understand that Standard Australian English is a living language within which the creation and loss of words and the evolution of usage is ongoing

  Elaborations

  • identifying some of the changes in the grammar of English over time, for example from thee and thou to you
  • exploring examples of ‘Globish’ English

  VCELA452 | Curriculum content | English | Level 9 | Speaking and Listening | Language

• VCELA430

  Compare and contrast the use of cohesive devices in texts, focusing on how they serve to signpost ideas, to make connections and to build semantic associations between ideas

  Elaborations

  • sequencing and developing an argument using basic language structures that suggest conclusions (‘therefore’, ‘thus’ and ‘so’) or give reasons (‘since’, ‘because’) or suggest conditionals (‘if’… ‘then’)

  VCELA430 | Curriculum content | English | Level 9 | Reading and Viewing | Language