Learning requirements
The learning requirements summarise the knowledge, skills, and understanding that students are expected to develop and demonstrate through their learning in Stage 2 Essential English.
In this subject, students are expected to:
1. extend communication skills through reading, viewing, writing, listening, and speaking
2. consider and respond to information, ideas, and perspectives in texts selected from social, cultural, community, workplace, and/or imaginative contexts
3. examine the effect of language choices, conventions, and stylistic features in a range of texts for different audiences
4. analyse the role of language in supporting effective communication
5. create oral, written, and multimodal texts that communicate information, ideas, and perspectives for a range of purposes.
Content
Stage 2 Essential English is a 20-credit subject.
The content includes:
- responding to texts
- creating texts
- language study.
In designing an appropriate Stage 2 Essential English program it is important to consider what students know and understand about the use of spoken and written language in vocational, school, cultural, social, and/or personal contexts. It is also necessary to consider the students’ aspirations.
Students connect with other people in many ways, using a variety of forms for different purposes. Decisions about the content of the teaching and learning program should centre on ways in which students use language to establish and maintain effective connections and interactions with people in one or more contexts. A context may be local, national, or international, and may be accessed in person or online.
The specific contexts chosen for study may be social, cultural, community, workplace, and/or imagined. The texts and contexts may be negotiated with the students, and there may be a focus on different contexts and/or texts within any class group.
A suggested text list is available on the subject minisite.
Responding to texts
Students respond to a range of texts that instruct, engage, challenge, inform, and connect readers. They consider information, ideas, and perspectives represented in the chosen texts.
Texts for this study will have a direct connection with the chosen context. Students could, for example, be involved in, or be a member of a:
- volunteer organisation
- workplace
- group from a culturally and linguistically diverse background
- social networking community
- school-based special-interest group
- group of students for whom English is a second or additional language.
Teachers choose texts relevant to one or more of these contexts. The reading of these texts clarifies and extends students’ comprehension of the processes, issues, or concerns of individuals or communities.
Students may explore the different points of view presented in a text by analysing content, attitudes, stylistic features, and language features. Students reflect on ways in which texts may be interpreted through identifying the effect of language choice.
Students consider how perspectives are represented in texts to influence specific audiences. For some texts students have an opportunity to identify facts, opinions, supporting evidence, and bias. In addition, students may consider how some points of view are privileged while others are marginalised or silenced.
Students reflect on ways in which community, local, or global issues and ideas are presented in texts; they develop reasoned responses to these issues and ideas. Students develop independent points of view by synthesising information from a range of sources.
In reflecting on, and possibly participating in, discussions and community debates, students have opportunities to develop understanding and appreciation of the diversity of cultures, including Indigenous cultures.
Creating texts
Students create procedural, imaginative, analytical, interpretive, or persuasive texts appropriate to a context.
To create some texts it will be necessary for students to gather different points of view, for example, through interviews, surveys, questionnaires, and Internet resources. For these texts it will be important for students to determine the relevance of source material to context and topic.
Students learn that authors observe various conventions of style, content, vocabulary, register, and format, and that some authors ignore or deliberately challenge these conventions. Students should be aware of the stylistic features and textual conventions of various forms.
When creating their own procedural, imaginative, analytical, persuasive, and/or interpretive texts, students are encouraged to consider the intended purpose of the text, the representation of ideas and issues, and the possible response of the audience.
Students create a persuasive text that advocates for an issue, cause, or process relevant to a context in which the student is living, studying, and/or working.
Students extend their literacy skills to equip them for work, future learning, and participation in civic life. They develop appropriate vocabulary and use accurate spelling, punctuation, and grammar. Students use strategies for planning, drafting, revising, editing, and proofreading, and, where necessary, appropriate referencing.
Hearing impaired and/or speech-impaired students can use alternative means of communication, such as signing or the use of appropriate technology, for the oral modes.
Language study
The language study focuses on the use of language by people in a context outside of the classroom.
Students select one of the following contexts for study:
- workplace, training or volunteering
- virtual social networking
- a recreational or personal interest (e.g. sport, reading)
- educational/academic (e.g. school)
- cultural (e.g. language group, festival)
- the local community
- a community of interest.
They need to consider the practical and ethical implications of communicating effectively and appropriately.
Students consider the use of language in their chosen context, including the communication of information, ideas, and perspectives. Students examine ways in which language, in conjunction with, for example, ethnicity, gender identity, social and economic status, and age, is used to support communication and the formation and maintenance of personal and group identity.
Students reflect on the strategies and language used to communicate in a specific context.
The language study could also explore ways in which people change or modify their use of language according to context, purpose, or audience expectation.
- Teacher: Eric Braun