Rationale/Aims

Rationale

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. Essential English is designed to provide students with the skills that will empower them to succeed in a wide range of post-secondary pathways.

The subject develops students’ language, literacy and literary skills to enable students to communicate successfully both orally and in writing and to enjoy and value using language for both imaginative and practical purposes.

Students comprehend, analyse, interpret and evaluate the content, structure and style of a wide variety of oral, written and multimodal texts, including literary, digital and media texts. Students learn how the interaction of structure, language, audience and context helps to shape different points of view and perspectives. Both independently and collaboratively, they apply their knowledge to create interpretive, imaginative, analytical and persuasive texts in different modes and mediums.

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, Essential English aims to develop students’:

capacity to use and apply language and information effectively, confidently and creatively in vocational, community and academic contexts
understanding of the ways in which text structure, stylistic feature and register combine to make meaning and influence responses
proficiency in using and creating multimodal, literary and digital texts.