Year 7 English Syllabus
Year 7
Year level description
In the early adolescence phase of schooling, students align with their peer group and begin to question established conventions, practices and values. Learning and teaching programs assist students to develop a broader and more comprehensive understanding of the contexts of their lives and the world in which they live.
English provides opportunities for students to extend their interests beyond their own communities, and they begin to develop awareness about wider issues. Students’ interest in the natural, social, cultural and technological world is often related to the impact on them personally and can help them in their current and future lives.
In Year 7, students’ growing independence and peer-group orientation should be built upon by providing opportunities for them to participate in important forms of decision‑making within the classroom and to work with others. Through such experiences students assume increased responsibilities, explore values and further refine their social and collaborative work skills.
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 7, students learn how text structures and language features vary according to audience and purpose, and how techniques influence emotions and opinions and create meaning.
Students engage with a range of texts for learning and enjoyment. They listen to, read, view, analyse, interpret, evaluate, create and perform a range of spoken, written and multimodal texts. These texts may include various types of media texts (including screen, online and digital texts), narratives (including novels), non-fiction, poetry and plays. 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, may involve some challenging sequences of events and/or less predictable characters, may explore themes of interpersonal relationships and ethical dilemmas in real-world and fictional settings, and represent a variety of perspectives
- informative, analytical and persuasive texts that may present technical information and content from credible sources about specialised topics
- texts with a variety of language features that may include successive complex sentences with embedded clauses, unfamiliar technical vocabulary, figurative and rhetorical language, and/or information supported by various types of images and graphics.
Students create a range of texts whose purposes may be aesthetic, imaginative, reflective, informative, persuasive and/or analytical. 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, online and digital texts for different audiences.
Year 7
Achievement standard
By the end of the year:
Speaking and Listening
Students interact with others, and listen to and create spoken and/or multimodal texts, including literary texts. With different purposes and for audiences, they discuss, express and expand ideas with evidence. They adopt text structures to organise, develop and link ideas. They adopt language features, literary devices and/or multimodal features and features of voice.
Reading and Viewing
Students read, view and comprehend texts created to inform, influence and/or engage audiences. They explain and discuss how ideas are portrayed and how texts are influenced by contexts. They explain and discuss the aesthetic qualities of texts, and how text structures, language features, literary devices and visual features shape meaning. They select evidence from texts to develop their own response.
Writing and Creating
Students create written and/or multimodal texts, including literary texts, for different purposes and audiences, expressing and expanding on ideas with evidence. They adopt text structures to organise, develop and link ideas. They adopt language features, literary devices and/or multimodal features.
Year 7
Content descriptions
Language for interacting with others
Understand how language expresses and creates personal and social identities
WA7ELAI1
For example:
- developing dialogue that reveals character, such as in a comic
Recognise language used to evaluate texts, including visual and multimodal texts, and how evaluations of a text can be substantiated by reference to the text and other sources
WA7ELAI2
For example:
- building knowledge about words of evaluation, including words to express emotional responses to texts, such as shock, fear, anger, happiness and concern
- discussing how evaluative language is used to critically assess the validity of evidence and the reliability of sources, through using metalanguage, such as rigorous, biased, trustworthy, consistent and accurate
Text structure, organisation and features
Identify and describe how text structures and language features vary in texts according to purpose
WA7ELAT1
For example:
- examining the structures of book or film reviews and how they might move from description of context to summary of the text and then to judgement of the text
- explaining the social purpose of a persuasive text and how the purpose is reflected in the text structures and by the language features, such as analysing the structure and language features of a health awareness poster
Understand that the cohesion of texts relies on devices that signal structure and guide readers, such as overviews and initial and concluding paragraphs
WA7ELAT2
For example:
- identifying strategies used to create cohesion when analysing the structure of a text, such as a print or online news article
- identifying how authors foreshadow how a text will unfold, through topic sentences, sentence openers and text connectives
Language for expressing and developing ideas
Understand how complex and compound‑complex sentences can be used to elaborate, extend and explain ideas
WA7ELALA1
For example:
- examining the addition of ideas using a compound-complex sentence, such as When dinosaurs roamed the earth, weather patterns shifted significantly and as a result vegetation was depleted.
- consolidating knowledge of simple, compound and complex sentences, recognising that a simple sentence can express sophisticated ideas and a complex sentence need not express complex ideas
Understand how consistency of tense through verbs and verb groups achieves clarity in sentences
WA7ELALA2
For example:
- identifying and discussing how verb tense is maintained in compound, complex and compound-complex sentences
Analyse how techniques, such as vectors, angle and/or framing in visual and multimodal texts can be used to create a perspective
WA7ELALA3
For example:
- comparing how two advertisements present the same product for different target audiences, and how their use of techniques creates different perspectives
Investigate the role of vocabulary in building specialist and technical knowledge, including terms that have both everyday and technical meanings
WA7ELALA4
For example:
- applying vocabulary used to write about graphic novels, such as gutter, bleed, panel, splash, transitions and emanata
Understand and use punctuation, including colons and brackets to support meaning
WA7ELALA5
For example:
- examining ways to add information to sentences by using different forms of punctuation
Word knowledge
Understand how to use spelling rules and word origins; for example, Greek and Latin roots, base words, suffixes, prefixes and spelling patterns to learn new words and how to spell them
WA7ELAW1
For example:
- using spelling generalisations (rules), such as change final y to i before adding a suffix, unless the y is preceded by a vowel or unless the suffix begins with i in words like cried, crying
- using knowledge of Greek and Latin roots to understand and spell words with prefixes, such as <anti> antidote, antibiotic or <pre> presume, prepare
- using spelling patterns to learn new words, such as drought, bough, plough
Literature and contexts
Identify and explore ideas, perspectives, characters, events and/or issues in literary texts drawn from historical, social and/or cultural contexts by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander, wide-ranging Australian and world authors and creators
WA7ELICO1
For example:
- investigating different perspectives about the Australian landscape (e.g. the bush, city, sea) in a range of poems
Engaging with and responding to literature
Form an opinion about characters, settings and events in texts, identifying areas of agreement and difference with others’ opinions and justifying a response
WA7ELIEN1
For example:
- participating in a class discussion about a favourite character or event from a novel
Explain the ways that literary devices and language features, such as dialogue, and visual and audio features are used to create character, and to influence emotions and opinions in different types of texts
WA7ELIEN2
For example:
- identifying how the protagonist or antagonist in a film is constructed through visual and audio features, such as dialogue, music, costuming, lighting, framing, camera angles and camera movement
- comparing the representations of the same character in a comic book and a film, and exploring how they prompt similar or different responses
Discuss the aesthetic and social value of literary texts using relevant and appropriate metalanguage
WA7ELIEN3
For example:
- exploring how fairytales or fables convey important social values
- examining how the covers of different picture books are visually appealing
Examining literature
Identify and explain the ways that characters, settings and events combine to create meaning in narratives
WA7ELIEX1
For example:
- exploring traditional stories from Asia and discussing their features, such as use of the oral mode or visual elements to convey the narrative
Identify and explain how literary devices create layers of meaning in texts, including poetry
WA7ELIEX2
For example:
- discussing the layers of meaning created by imagery in poems and songs by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander authors
- using metalanguage, such as simile, metaphor, onomatopoeia and alliteration to explain how the use of figurative language and sound devices in poetry creates layers of meaning
Creating literature
Create and edit literary texts that experiment with language features and literary devices encountered in texts
WA7ELICR1
For example:
- developing a prequel or sequel using an imagined series of life events of a character presented in a scripted monologue
- experimenting with different narrative structures, such as the epistolary form, flashback and multiple narrators
Texts in context
Explain the effect of current technology on reading, creating and responding to texts, including media texts
WA7ELYT1
For example:
- exploring new forms of digital texts, such as social media and vlogs, and the interactive nature of the responses they generate
- investigating how picture books have been adapted into different forms, such as short films, animations and audiobooks using current technology
Interacting with others
Use interaction skills when discussing and presenting ideas and information, including evaluations of the features of spoken texts
WA7ELYI1
For example:
- listening to a peer’s oral presentation about an autobiographical event and asking a clarifying question
- choosing appropriate vocabulary and sentence structures for purposes and audiences
Analysing, interpreting and evaluating
Analyse the ways in which language features shape meaning and vary according to purpose and audience
WA7ELYA1
For example:
- explaining the relationship between language features, and purpose and audience, such as identifying the most likely target audience for a television show
Explain how ideas are organised through the use of text structures, such as taxonomies, cause and effect, extended metaphors and chronology
WA7ELYA2
For example:
- identifying cause and effect in persuasive texts and how an audience may be convinced to take a course of action
- explaining how a key idea in a speech is represented through an extended metaphor
Use comprehension strategies, such as visualising, predicting, connecting, summarising, monitoring, questioning and inferring, to analyse and summarise information and ideas when listening, reading and viewing
WA7ELYA3
For example:
- determining and summarising the key idea/s of paragraphs or chapters in an informative text
- comparing the presentation of ideas in formal and informal speeches and determining the reasons for the differences
Creating texts
Plan, create, edit and publish written and multimodal texts, selecting subject matter, and using text structures, language features, literary devices and visual features as appropriate to convey information, ideas and opinions in ways that may be imaginative, reflective, informative, persuasive and/or analytical
WA7ELYC1
Plan, create, rehearse and deliver spoken and multimodal presentations for purpose and audience in ways that may be imaginative, reflective, informative, persuasive and/or analytical, by selecting text structures, language features, literary devices and visual features, and using features of voice, including volume, tone, pitch and pace
WA7ELYC2
Consolidate a personal handwriting style that is legible, fluent and automatic and supports writing for extended periods
WA7ELYC3
Select and use features of digital tools to create texts for different purposes and audiences
WA7ELYC4
For example:
- creating a multimodal book trailer to promote a novel to a specific audience
- creating an extract from an audiobook that incorporates narration, sound effects and music to engage the listener