English

200 hours

English focuses on developing students’ analytical, creative and critical thinking and communication skills in all language modes. It encourages students to engage with texts from their contemporary world, with texts from the past and with texts from Australian and other cultures. Such engagement helps students develop a sense of themselves, their world and their place in it.


Aims

English aims to develop students’:

  • skills in writing, reading, listening, speaking, viewing and representing

  • capacity to create texts for a range of purposes, audiences and contexts

  • understanding and appreciation of different uses of language.

  • understanding of the use of language for communication

  • appreciation and creation of sustained interpretive, persuasive and imaginative texts in a range of modes

  • engagement in critical analysis and reflection.


In line with the recommendations in the new Australian Curriculum, students in Stage 5 (Years 9-10) must study examples of:

  • spoken texts

  • print texts

  • visual texts

  • media, multimedia and digital texts.

Across the stage, the selection of texts must give students experience of:

  • texts which are widely regarded as quality literature

  • a widely defined Australian literature, including texts that give insights into Aboriginal experiences in Australia

  • a wide range of literary texts from other countries and times, including poetry, drama
    scripts, prose fiction and picture books

  • texts written about intercultural experiences

  • texts that provide insights about the peoples and cultures of Asia

  • Shakespearean drama

  • everyday and workplace texts

  • a wide range of cultural, social and gender perspectives, popular and youth cultures

  • texts that include aspects of environmental and social sustainability

  • an appropriate range of digital texts, including film, media and multimedia.

See more on the NESA website