Consumer and financial literacy: English

English

The Australian Curriculum: English has an important role in developing consumer and financial literacy in young people. The English curriculum develops students’ understanding of how to read, view and interpret texts. Through the literacy strand of the curriculum, students learn to understand the full range of texts that they need to work with in school and broader community contexts. The English curriculum supports the development of the following dimensions of consumer and financial literacy.

Approximate proportion of dimensions addressed in English

The study of English enables students to construct meaning from different texts and to evaluate how text structures, images and language features influence readers and viewers. These skills are underlined by the understanding students develop about how language varies depending on the formality of social interactions, and how the choice of language and text structures is influenced by audience and purpose. These key principles support students to read, view, listen to and interpret a range of financial texts and critically analyse the ways in which marketers and advertisers manipulate consumers. When given opportunities to deconstruct these texts, students can become more knowledgeable about and develop a deeper understanding of their behaviour as consumers.

The content descriptions that relate to consumer and financial literacy have been drawn from the language and literacy strands. Only those content descriptions with explicit links to consumer and financial literacy have been included in the mapping. Other content descriptors that provide opportunities have been mapped to the Literacy general capability. The literature strand has not been included in this mapping. However, there are opportunities to include this strand when students engage with literary texts that focus on a consumer or financial theme, such as ASIC’s digital big book Ava makes a difference and story resources supporting the Years 1, 2 and 3 Mathematics units, or when narrative is identified as a tool to promote consumer or financial products.

Moneysmart for teachers and Tax, Super and You provide a number of interdisciplinary units and interactive activities that either focus on or include aspects of the English curriculum. Access a list of relevant resources that link to the Australian Curriculum: English using the right-hand menu.