VCE English focuses on how the English language is used to create meaning in print and digital texts of varying complexity. Literary texts selected for study are drawn from the past and present, from Australia and other cultures and comprise many text types, including media texts for analysis of argument. The study is intended to meet the needs of students with a wide range of expectations and aspirations, including those for whom English is an additional language.
In this area of study, students engage in reading and viewing texts with a focus on personal connections with the story. They draw on personal experience and understanding in developing writing about texts and work to shape their ideas and knowledge into formal essay structures.
Area of Study 2: Crafting texts In this area of study, students engage with and understand effective and cohesive writing. They apply, extend, and challenge their understanding and use of imaginative, persuasive, and informative texts. Through guided reading of mentor texts, students understand the diverse ways that vocabulary, text structures, language features and ideas can interweave to craft compelling texts.
Students develop their reading and viewing skills, including deepening their capacity for inferential reading and viewing, to open possible meanings in a text further, and extending their writing in response to the text. Students will develop their skills from Unit 1 by exploring a different text type from that studied in Unit 1.
Students consider the way disputes are developed and delivered in many forms of media. Students read, view, and listen to various texts that attempt to position an intended audience in a particular context. They closely examine the language and the visuals employed by the author and offer analysis of the intended effect on the audience.
Students apply reading and viewing strategies to critically engage with a text, considering its dynamics and complexities, and reflecting on the motivations of its characters. They analyse the ways authors construct meaning through vocabulary, text structures, language features and conventions, and the presentation of ideas. They are provided with opportunities to understand and explore the historical context and the social and cultural values of a text, and recognise how these elements influence the way a text is read or viewed, is understood by different audiences, and positions readers differently.
Students build on the knowledge and skills developed through Unit 1. They read and engage imaginatively and critically with mentor texts and effective and cohesive writing within identified contexts. Through close reading, students expand their understanding of the diverse ways that vocabulary, text structures, language features, conventions and ideas can interweave to create compelling texts. They further consider mentor texts through their understanding of the ways that purpose, context (including mode), and specific and situated audiences influence and shape writing.
Students further sharpen their skills of reading and viewing texts, developed in the corresponding area of study in Unit 3. Students consolidate their capacity to critically analyse texts and deepen their understanding of the ideas and values a text can convey.
Students analyse the use of argument and language, and visuals in texts that debate a contemporary and significant national or international issue. The texts must have appeared in the media since 1 September of the previous year, and teachers are advised to work with their students to select an issue of relevance to the cohort. Students read, view, and/or listen to a variety of texts from the media. Students then select an issue and create a point of view presentation.
