English Years 1 to 10 Syllabus

Nature of the English key learning area

The Years 1 to 10 English key learning area develops understandings about literary, mass media and everyday texts, language use, and associated literacy practices. These understandings enable students to explore and examine ways of knowing, being, doing, thinking, feeling and interacting in diverse situations, times and places within and beyond their direct experiences.

Through texts people express and share the vitality of cultures and communities; tell the stories of cultures; contribute to the shaping of personal, group and national identities; explore ideas and feelings that invite reflection on knowledge, values and practices; promote shared cultural understandings; and enable things to get done in the community. Through language used in texts people represent experiences of real and imagined worlds, interact with others, and create coherent and cohesive texts in order to participate in and contribute to culturally diverse communities.

Students become confident, effective and critical users of texts and language by learning to make meanings in texts in contexts, operating language systems in texts, and evaluating and reconstructing meanings in texts in the English key learning area. Such learnings can generate an appreciation and enjoyment of texts and language, an interest in learning about alternative ways of being in the world, and an ability to make judgments about and accept or challenge meanings in texts.

Strands and sub-strands

The learning outcomes for the English key learning area are organised into three strands and three sub-strands.

Strands

The three strands are:

• Cultural: making meanings in contexts
• Operational: operating language systems
• Critical: evaluating and reconstructing meanings in texts.

Cultural: making meanings in contexts focuses on interpreting and constructing literary, mass media and everyday texts in ways that demonstrate understandings of what makes texts appropriate to and effective in a given cultural context and social situation.

Operational: operating language systems focuses on operating language systems to interpret and construct spoken (signed), written, visual and multimodal texts using understandings of associated textual resources and the patterns of their use.

Critical: evaluating and reconstructing meanings in texts focuses on evaluating and reconstructing meanings in texts using understandings of how the knowledge, values and practices associated with groups shape and are shaped by choices of texts and language.

Each strand provides a distinct focus for student learning and each makes an equally important contribution to English as a key learning area. These three strands are interrelated and together allow for the holistic nature of English to be maintained. The three Strands are interdependent and provide a framework for planning for learning and assessment in the English key learning area.

Sub-strands

The three sub-strands are:

• Speaking and listening
• Reading and viewing
• Writing and shaping.

The sub-strands each have a particular and distinct focus, although usually they combine in various ways in multimodal texts.

The strands and sub-strands work together to integrate learning in the English key learning area. At each level, the strands are conceptualised as interrelated: complementary interactive and interdependent. While the strands and sub-strands operate together they may be given relative emphases when planning for learning and assessment within particular units of work or worthwhile activities.