The English curriculum is organised under 3 interrelated strands: Language, Literature and Literacy. While each strand articulates the essential skills of English, they should be seen as interlinked and interconnected. Together, the 3 strands focus on developing students’ knowledge, understanding and skills in listening, speaking, reading, viewing and writing. The English curriculum is underpinned by the selection of texts appropriate...
The English curriculum is organised under 3 interrelated strands: Language, Literature and Literacy. While each strand articulates the essential skills of English, they should be seen as interlinked and interconnected. Together, the 3 strands focus on developing students’ knowledge, understanding and skills in listening, speaking, reading, viewing and writing. The English curriculum is underpinned by the selection of texts appropriate for the level.
The achievement standards explicitly link together skills drawn from the 3 strands, and map directly into the sub-strands. Unlike the strands, the achievement standards are organised through the language modes of Speaking and Listening, Reading and Viewing, and Writing. Further information about the connections between the content descriptions and the achievement standards can be found in the ‘Learning in English’ section.
At Level 4, students use language to interact and develop relationships in different contexts.
Students engage with a variety of texts for enjoyment and learning. They listen to, read, view and interpret spoken, written and multimodal texts. Texts may include oral texts, picture books, various types of print and digital texts, short novels of different genres, rhyming verse, poetry, non-fiction, film, multimodal texts, dramatic performances, and texts used by students as models for creating their own work.
The range of literary texts comprises the oral narrative traditions and literature of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples, and classic and contemporary literature from a wide range of Australian and world authors, including texts from and about Asia.
Literary texts that support and extend students in Level 4 as independent readers may describe sequences of events that develop over chapters, and unusual happenings within a framework of familiar experiences. Informative texts include content of increasing complexity and technicality about topics of interest and topics being studied in other areas of the curriculum. These texts use language features including varied sentence structures, some unfamiliar vocabulary that may include English words derived from other languages, a significant number of high-frequency words, words that need to be decoded using phonic and morphemic knowledge, a variety of punctuation conventions, and illustrations and diagrams that support and extend the printed text.
Students create a range of narrative, informative and persuasive texts that may include stories, performances, reports, reviews, poetry and arguments for particular purposes and audiences.
By the end of Level 4, students demonstrate the following skills in English.
When interacting with others, students use an expanded vocabulary and language to develop relationships in different contexts.
They share and extend ideas and information. They differentiate between the language of opinion, facts and feelings.
When speaking to an audience, students deliver structured spoken texts, exploring topics and text types, including multimodal or digital elements. They use language suitable to context, and appropriate features of voice.
When reading and viewing, students engage with a range of different types of texts for meaning.
They read by integrating phonic, morphemic and vocabulary knowledge; grammatical knowledge such as the use of clauses and phrases to provide details and indicate relationships; and knowledge of punctuation for dialogue.
When demonstrating understanding of texts, students consider storylines, ideas and relationships between characters to build literal and inferred meanings. They describe the effects of text structures and language features. They share opinions about texts.
They explore how different types of texts across the curriculum, both print and digital, are organised into characteristic stages for purpose and navigation. They describe how literary devices, such as wordplay, shape meaning. They explore the framing and composition of still images and moving images and the use of sound.
When creating written and spoken texts for a small range of purposes and audiences, students adapt ideas and details from texts, learnt topics or topics of interest, and include appropriate multimodal elements. They edit their texts to improve content and structure.
They use text structures to sequence and connect ideas and to develop paragraphs. They use grammar and punctuation to create relationships, including through the use of tense.
They expand their vocabulary, such as through using synonyms and antonyms, and they use adverbial phrases to build meaning. They explore language features, including wordplay.
They write texts using clearly formed joined letters with developing fluency. They spell words, including multisyllabic and multimorphemic words with irregular spelling patterns, using phonic, morphemic and grammatical knowledge.
