Essential English (Version 8.4)

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Unit 1
Unit 2
Unit 3
Unit 4

Understand how Essential English works

Rationale/Aims

Essential English focuses on consolidating and refining the skills and knowledge needed by students to become competent, confident and engaged users of English in many contemporary contexts including everyday, community, social, further education, training and workplace contexts.

Structure of Essential English

Unit 1 focuses on students comprehending and responding to the ideas and information presented in texts drawn from a range of contexts. Students are taught a variety of strategies to assist comprehension.

Texts

Teachers will use an array of material in class. Texts include literary texts, fiction and non-fiction, media texts, everyday texts, and workplace texts, from increasingly complex and unfamiliar settings, ranging from the everyday language of personal experience to more abstract, specialised and technical language drawn from a range of contexts.

Representation of General capabilities

General capabilities covered in Essential English include: Literacy, Numeracy, Information and communication technology (ICT) capability, Critical and creative thinking, Personal and social capability, Ethical understanding and Intercultural understanding.

Achievement standards

Unit 3

Unit 3 Description

Unit 3 focuses on exploring different points of view presented in a range of texts and contexts. Students analyse attitudes, text structures and language features to understand a text’s meaning and purpose. They consider how perspectives and values are represented in texts to influence specific audiences. When responding to texts, students reflect on a range of interpretations as they develop their own interpretations. Students learn to articulate reasoned and persuasive arguments and to develop an understanding of purpose and context. When interacting with others, the emphasis is on identifying and understanding differing perspectives. Students learn how to communicate logically, persuasively and imaginatively in a range of different contexts, for different purposes, using a variety of types of texts.

Unit 3 Learning Outcomes

By the end of this unit, students:

examine the ways that points of view are presented in texts for different purposes and contexts
understand how language choices persuade specific audiences
create oral, written and multimodal texts that convey a point of view.

Unit 3 Content Descriptions

Use strategies and skills for comprehending texts including:

distinguishing different points of view about the main ideas in texts (ACEEE029)

identifying facts, opinions, supporting evidence and bias (ACEEE030)

understanding the way attitudes and values are represented (ACEEE031)

explaining shifts in intonation and point of view, identifying the effect of language choices on an audience. (ACEEE032)

Consider how different perspectives and values are presented in texts including:

the relationships between context, purpose, and audience, and the impact on meaning in social, community and workplace texts (ACEEE033)

use of mediums, types of texts, text structures and language features; for example, the selective use of fact, evidence and opinion in newspaper reports, the use of statistics and graphs in advertisements, choice of colour and font-style in websites and use of questioning strategies and tone of voice in interviews (ACEEE034)

the use of narrative techniques; for example, characterisation and dialogue in novels and film, avatars in multiplayer video games and first person narrator. (ACEEE035)

Using information for specific purposes and contexts by:

gathering different points of view, for example, through interviews, surveys, questionnaires, library and/or internet resources (ACEEE036)

categorising and integrating ideas and information about specific themes or ideas (ACEEE037)

understanding ethical research practices. (ACEEE038)

Create a range of texts:

using personal voice and adopting different points of view to influence audiences in a range of mediums and digital technologies (ACEEE039)

selecting text structures, language features, and visual techniques to communicate and represent ideas and information for different contexts and purposes; for example, writing diary entries of real or imagined people, creating interactive websites, participating in workplace role plays and scripting fictional dialogues (ACEEE040)

developing appropriate vocabulary and using accurate spelling, punctuation and grammar (ACEEE041)

using strategies for planning, drafting, revising, editing and proofreading, and appropriate referencing. (ACEEE042)