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 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 7, students use language to interact and to express their social identities.
Students engage with a variety of texts for enjoyment and learning. They listen to, read, view, analyse, interpret, create and perform a range of spoken, written and multimodal texts. Texts may include various types of media, online and digital texts, novels, non-fiction, film, poetry and dramatic performances. The features of these texts may be 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 7 as independent readers may be drawn from a range of realistic, fantasy, speculative fiction and historical genres. They may involve some challenging sequences of events and/or less predictable characters. These texts may explore themes of interpersonal relationships and ethical dilemmas in real-world and fictional settings, and represent a variety of perspectives. Informative texts may present technical information and content from credible sources about specialised topics. Text structures may be more complex, including chapters, headings and subheadings, tables of contents, indexes and glossaries. Language features may include successive complex sentences with embedded clauses, unfamiliar technical vocabulary, figurative and rhetorical language, and/or information supported by various types of images and graphics.
Students create a range of texts whose purposes may be aesthetic, narrative, reflective, informative, persuasive and/or analytical, for example stories, performances, reports, reviews and arguments for different audiences.
By the end of Level 7, students demonstrate the following skills in English.
When interacting with others, students explore specialist and technical vocabulary and use language to express social identities.
They discuss and present ideas, including about texts. They explore the language of evaluation and substantiation.
When speaking to an audience, students deliver structured spoken texts, selecting text types appropriate for purpose and audience, including multimodal or digital elements. They demonstrate an understanding of formal language and use appropriate features of voice.
When reading and viewing, students engage with a range of different types of texts for meaning.
They engage with vocabulary and grammatical knowledge, and the ways that different sentence structures extend and explain ideas, how accurate use of tense creates clarity and how punctuation supports meaning.
When demonstrating understanding of texts, students explain ways that characters, settings and events combine and create meaning in texts from different historical, cultural or social contexts. They develop opinions about texts through explorations of how literary devices and language features, and still and moving images and sound, create characters, settings and events. They explain and summarise ideas drawn from texts.
They describe how texts, including print and digital, are structured for different purposes. They explain how literary devices create meaning and aesthetic qualities. They explore how perspective is created through still images, moving images and sound.
When creating written and spoken texts, students convey ideas and information to a specific audience. They select textual details from texts appropriate for purpose, and include appropriate multimodal or digital elements. They review and edit their own and others’ texts and reflect on these processes.
They use text structures that build sequence and cohesion in a text; grammar, including sentence structures, to achieve clarity; and punctuation to support meaning.
They use vocabulary that builds specialist and technical knowledge. They experiment with language features and literary devices they have encountered in texts.
They use spelling rules and knowledge of word origins to spell unfamiliar words.
