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 9, students use language to interact and to support strengthening relationships and roles.
Students engage with a variety of texts for enjoyment and learning. They analyse, interpret, evaluate, discuss, create and perform a wide range of texts. Texts may include various types of media texts such as film, digital and online texts, novels, non-fiction, poetry, dramatic performances and multimodal texts. Themes and issues may involve levels of abstraction, higher-order reasoning and intertextual references. Students are beginning to develop a critical understanding of how texts, language, and visual and audio features are influenced by context.
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 9 as independent readers may be drawn from a range of literary genres. They may involve complex, challenging plot sequences and/or hybrid structures that may serve multiple purposes. These texts may explore themes of human experience and cultural significance, interpersonal relationships, and/or ethical and global dilemmas in real-world and fictional settings. They may represent a variety of perspectives. Informative texts may represent a synthesis of technical and abstract information (from credible or verifiable sources) about a wide range of specialised topics and concepts. Language features may include successive complex sentences with embedded clauses, a high proportion of unfamiliar and technical vocabulary, figurative and rhetorical language, and/or dense information supported by various types of images and graphics.
Students create a range of texts whose purposes may be aesthetic, narrative, reflective, informative, persuasive, analytical and/or critical, for example stories, performances, reports, discussions, literary analyses, arguments, transformations of texts and reviews for a range of audiences.
By the end of Level 9, students demonstrate the following skills in English.
When interacting with others, students explore vocabulary of mood and style and use language to strengthen relationships and roles.
They discuss opinions on texts. They use evaluative and substantiative language to express individual views.
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 different levels of formality in their language choice 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, including the ways that sentence structures are varied for creative effect and how punctuation supports citation and reference.
When demonstrating understanding of texts, students discuss their responses to texts from diverse historical, cultural and social contexts, and they compare initial and subsequent impressions. They explore different responses, including personal impressions. They analyse how language and/or still and moving images and sound represent values, beliefs and attitudes and are used to shape audiences’ preferences. They analyse the relationship between text structures, language features, literary devices and intertextual connections.
They explore how authors adapt and experiment with texts, including print, digital and hybrid, according to purpose. They analyse how literary devices, including poetic features, create meaning and aesthetic qualities. They analyse how symbols in still and moving images, and sound effects, create meaning.
When creating written and spoken texts, students present ideas through a point of view and/or a voice. They experiment with textual elements and include appropriate multimodal or digital elements. They review and edit their own and others’ texts for clarity and control and reflect on these processes.
They experiment with text structures for cohesion and sequence, vary grammar for creative effect and use punctuation to condense and link ideas.
They use vocabulary that contributes to style, mood and tone. They use language features and literary devices to create hybrid texts.
They explore standard and non-standard spelling for creative effect.
