Year 10 English Syllabus
Year 10
Year level description
In the middle adolescence phase of schooling, teaching and learning programs encourage students to develop an open and questioning view of themselves as active participants in their society and the world.
English provides opportunities for students to understand that particular ways of working and thinking have developed over time but still may be subject to debate, revision and change. Students develop a broader and more comprehensive understanding of the contexts of their lives and the world in which they live.
In Year 10, students use spoken, written or visual communication to interact with others and experience learning in familiar and unfamiliar contexts, including local or global community and vocational contexts. Teaching and learning programs should encourage students to develop an open and questioning view. Learning experiences should enable students to draw on increasingly diverse and complex sources of information that facilitate comparing, contrasting, synthesising, questioning and critiquing information.
Critical literacy is integral to the English curriculum. It is developed when students actively question, analyse, evaluate and synthesise the texts they engage with. In Year 10, students learn how language features and text structures may have aesthetic qualities. They learn how representations of individuals, groups and places relate to context and how techniques shape values, beliefs and attitudes.
Students engage with a range of texts for learning and enjoyment. They listen to, read, view, analyse, interpret, evaluate, create and perform a wide range of spoken, written and multimodal texts. These texts may include various types of media (including screen, online and digital texts), narratives (including novels), non-fiction, poetry and plays. Themes and issues may involve levels of abstraction, higher order reasoning and intertextual references. Students develop a critical understanding of how texts, language, and visual and audio features relate to context, purpose and audience. They understand how the features of texts may be used as models for creating their own work. The range of texts includes:
- literary texts that may be drawn from a range of genres that may involve complex, challenging plot sequences and hybrid structures that may serve multiple purposes and that may explore themes of human experience and cultural significance, interpersonal relationships, and ethical and global dilemmas in real-world and fictional settings. These texts may represent a variety of perspectives
- informative, analytical and persuasive texts that may represent a synthesis of technical and abstract information (from credible or verifiable sources) about specialised topics and concepts
- texts with a variety of language features that may include successive complex sentences with embedded clauses, a high proportion of unfamiliar and technical vocabulary, figurative and rhetorical language, and/or dense information supported by various types of images and graphics.
Students create a range of texts whose purposes may be aesthetic, imaginative, reflective, informative, persuasive, analytical and/or critical. These texts may include narratives, dramatic performances and scripts, reports, responses (including reviews and personal reflections), arguments, literary analyses, discussions, visual texts, oral and audio texts, poetry and types of media (including screen, online and digital texts) for a range of audiences.
Year 10
Achievement standard
By the end of the year:
Speaking and Listening
Students interact with others, and listen to and create spoken and multimodal texts, including literary texts. With a range of purposes and for audiences, they discuss ideas and responses to representations, making connections and providing substantiation. They select, adapt and experiment with text structures to organise and develop ideas. They select, adapt, vary and experiment with language features, rhetorical and literary devices, and experiment with multimodal features and features of voice.
Reading and Viewing
Students read, view and comprehend a range of texts created to inform, influence and engage audiences. They analyse, interpret and evaluate representations of people, places, events and concepts, and how interpretations of these may be influenced by readers and viewers. They analyse, interpret and evaluate the effects of text structures, language features, literary devices, intertextual connections and multimodal features, and their contribution to the aesthetic qualities of texts. They incorporate supporting evidence from texts to provide substantiation.
Writing and Creating
Students create written and multimodal texts, including literary texts, for a range of purposes and audiences, expressing ideas and representations, making connections and providing substantiation. They select, adapt and experiment with text structures to organise, develop and link ideas and representations. They select, adapt, vary and experiment with language features, literary devices, and multimodal features.
Year 10
Content descriptions
Language for interacting with others
Understand how language can have inclusive and exclusive social effects, and can empower or disempower people
WA10ELAI1
For example:
- writing an open letter that uses language to empower a social group
- discussing how language can be disempowering, such as the use of gendered words manpower or housewife
Understand that language used to evaluate, implicitly or explicitly, reveals an individual’s values
WA10ELAI2
For example:
- identifying subtle or implied values communicated through evaluative language, such as the connotations of elder, senior citizen, geriatric and old timer
Text structure, organisation and features
Analyse text structures and language features and evaluate their effectiveness in achieving their purpose
WA10ELAT1
For example:
- evaluating the use of visual, audio and written features and structures to influence audience responses in television and online news and current affairs programs
Understand how paragraph structure can be varied to create cohesion, and paragraphs and visual features can be integrated for different purposes
WA10ELAT2
For example:
- evaluating the effect of the integration of texts and images in graphic novels
- writing an online or print feature article which integrates graphics or images for a purpose
Language for expressing and developing ideas
Analyse and evaluate the effectiveness of particular sentence structures to express and craft ideas
WA10ELALA1
For example:
- exploring how a sentence can begin with a coordinating conjunction for stylistic effect, such as And she went on planning how she would manage it.
Analyse how meaning and style are achieved through syntax
WA10ELALA2
For example:
- identifying how logical relations between ideas are built up by combining main with subordinate clauses that indicate cause, result, manner, concession, condition and so on, such as Although the poet was not generally well-received by critics during her life, her reputation grew substantially after her death.
Evaluate the features of visual and multimodal texts, and the effects of those choices on representations
WA10ELALA3
For example:
- examining features of drama television shows that create representations, such as evaluating the use of light and dark
Use an expanded technical and academic vocabulary for precision when writing academic texts
WA10ELALA4
For example:
- writing an analytical essay about rhythm in poetry with appropriate use of terms, such as enjambment, end-stop, caesura
Understand how authors use and experiment with punctuation
WA10ELALA5
For example:
- examining an author’s use of ellipses to create tentativeness in a character’s speech
- reviewing the use of punctuation to represent emotions, such as the use of multiple exclamation marks or punctuation emojis
Word knowledge
Use word knowledge to maintain conventional spelling and to manipulate standard spelling for particular effects
WA10ELAW1
For example:
- exploring the use of ‘sensational spelling’ in which words are deliberately spelt in non‑standard ways, such as kwik‑e‑mart
Literature and contexts
Analyse representations of individuals, groups and places and evaluate how they relate to contexts in literary texts by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander, wide-ranging Australian and world authors and creators
WA10ELICO1
For example:
- analysing how stories written by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander authors modernise traditional stories, and evaluating the responses of contemporary audiences
- investigating how a creator’s personal, cultural and/or social context influences the ways in which they represent an individual, group or place in a literary text
Engaging with and responding to literature
Reflect on and extend others’ interpretations of and responses to literary texts
WA10ELIEN1
For example:
- presenting an argument based on close textual analysis and further research to support an interpretation of a play, such as creating a set of director’s notes
Analyse how the aesthetic qualities associated with text structures, language features, literary devices and visual features, and the context in which these texts are experienced, influence audience response
WA10ELIEN2
For example:
- discussing how audiences responded to a classic film at its time of production and how a contemporary audience might respond to the film today
- exploring the aesthetic qualities of a popular literary text
Evaluate the social, moral or ethical perspectives represented in literary texts
WA10ELIEN3
For example:
- identifying and analysing ethical perspectives on a significant issue in a novel, including values and/or principles involved, and evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of the perspectives presented
- considering the moral perspective adopted by a documentary and evaluating whether it aligns with the viewer’s personal stance
Examining literature
Analyse how text structure, language features, literary devices and intertextual connections shape interpretations of texts
WA10ELIEX1
For example:
- examining satirical representations of events or ideas and determining how satire shapes interpretations and responses
Compare and evaluate how ‘voice’ as a literary device is used in different types of texts, such as poetry, novels and film, to evoke emotional responses
WA10ELIEX2
For example:
- comparing the ‘voice’ of protest in a range of poems and songs, evaluating how different voices evoke a response
Analyse and evaluate the aesthetic qualities of texts
WA10ELIEX3
For example:
- considering how the two parts of the glossary definition of aesthetic – ‘concerned with a sense of beauty’ and ‘an appreciation of artistic expression’ – are different and how they intertwine
Creating literature
Create and edit literary texts with a sustained ‘voice’, selecting and adapting text structures, literary devices, and language, auditory and visual features for purposes and audiences
WA10ELICR1
For example:
- creating and editing a suite of short texts that focus on a key idea expressed in different voices
- composing an autobiographical narrative in the form of a digital story that incorporates written, visual and auditory features
Texts in context
Analyse and evaluate how people, places, events and concepts are represented in texts and relate to contexts
WA10ELYT1
For example:
- identifying stereotypes about Australia and Australian people in popular media and exploring how these representations are influenced by context
Interacting with others
Listen to spoken texts and explain the purposes and effects of text structures and language features, and use interaction skills to discuss and present an opinion about these texts
WA10ELYI1
For example:
- presenting opinions about a podcast or radio interview in a group discussion
Analysing, interpreting and evaluating
Analyse and evaluate how language features are used to implicitly or explicitly represent values, beliefs and attitudes
WA10ELYA1
For example:
- exploring the implicit and explicit values, beliefs and attitudes expressed and critiqued in social or political cartoons
Analyse and evaluate how authors and creators use text structures to organise ideas and achieve a purpose
WA10ELYA2
For example:
- evaluating how the organisation of ideas in a documentary achieves a purpose
Integrate comprehension strategies, such as visualising, predicting, connecting, summarising, monitoring, questioning and inferring, to analyse and interpret complex and abstract ideas when listening, reading and viewing
WA10ELYA3
For example:
- interpreting how visual, written and audio features represent abstract concepts in advertising, such as the representation of parenthood
- watching or listening to a speech about the meaning of success and considering what the concept means to the viewer or listener
Creating texts
Plan, create, edit and publish written and multimodal texts, organising, expanding and developing ideas through experimenting with text structures, language features, literary devices and multimodal features for specific purposes and audiences in ways that may be imaginative, reflective, informative, persuasive, analytical and/or critical
WA10ELYC1
Plan, create, rehearse and deliver spoken and multimodal presentations by experimenting with rhetorical devices, and the organisation and development of ideas, to engage audiences for different purposes in ways that may be imaginative, reflective, informative, persuasive, analytical and/or critical
WA10ELYC2
Consolidate a personal handwriting style that is legible, fluent and automatic and supports writing for extended periods in relevant required contexts
WA10ELYC3
Select, adapt and experiment with features of digital tools to create texts for a range of purposes and audiences
WA10ELYC4
For example:
- creating two short radio or podcast interviews focusing on the same topic but for two different audiences
- creating a playlist of songs that is inspired by a written text using a digital platform or program, and writing a rationale justifying the choices of digital features