Rationale

Rationale/Aims

Rationale

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.

Through close study and wide reading, viewing and listening, students develop the ability to appreciate and evaluate the purpose, stylistic qualities and conventions of literary and non-literary texts and enjoy creating their own imaginative, interpretive and analytical responses. English is designed to develop students’ facility with all types of texts and language modes and to foster an appreciation of the value of English for lifelong learning.

Students refine their skills across all language modes by engaging critically and creatively with texts, including literary and media texts. They learn to speak and write fluently in a range of contexts and to create visual and digital texts. They hone their oral communication skills through discussion, debate and argument, in a range of formal and informal situations.

Aims

All senior secondary English subjects aim to develop students’:

  • skills in listening, speaking, reading, viewing and writing
  • capacity to create texts for a range of purposes, audiences and contexts
  • understanding and appreciation of different uses of language.

In addition, English aims to develop students’:

  • 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.