English study is mandatory in NSW from Kindergarten to Year 12.
Students learn about the English language through written, spoken and visual texts of increasing complexity as they progress through their schooling.
An understanding of the English language is central to how we communicate and essential for intellectual, social and emotional development.
The study of English should develop a love of literature and learning and be challenging and enjoyable. It develops skills to enable students to experiment with ideas and expression, to become active, independent and lifelong learners, to work with each other and to reflect on their learning.
In Year 11 and 12, the study of English is mandatory. Courses offered include:
- English Standard
- English Studies.
- English Advanced
- English Extension 1
- English Extension 2 (Year 12 only)
English at Robert Townson High School
The English faculty at Robert Townson High School offers a broad range of curriculum options to ensure that all students are given the opportunity to develop a love of language in multiple forms and mediums. We believe that lifelong learning is crucial to realising our potential and intellectual, social and emotional development as human beings. The best foundation for this is reading, helping us to develop strong literacy skills, a love of literature and the ability to analyse and express ideas and opinions. It is through reading and experimentation with writing that students can engage with the world around them, learning to communicate effectively as literate, informed young adults.
As per the national syllabus guidelines, we explore language through written, spoken and visual texts and scaffold our units to ensure that students are consistently challenged to improve their skills as they progress through each stage. As students approach their senior years of schooling, the focus narrows into four distinct courses, tailored to suit the post-secondary educational aspirations of each student.
Staff Contact
Mrs C Masterfield (Head Teacher)
Christine.R.Arthur@det.nsw.edu.au
Ms B Kempaiah
Brittany.Searle@det.nsw.edu.au
Mrs L Wilson
Leah.Wilton@det.nsw.edu.au
Mr D Richards
Darian.Richards1@det.nsw.edu.au
Ms C Brady
Caitlin.Brady@det.nsw.edu.au
Ms C Snedden
Carol.Snedden@det.nsw.edu.au
Mrs M Kaur
Maninder.Kaur9@det.nsw.edu.au
Subjects offered at Robert Townson High School
Stage 4 (Mandatory)
Year 7
- What’s Your Story?
- Are You Talking to Me?
- Freak Out!
- Words around the World.
Year 8
- Through our Eyes – Australian Identity
- Conflict
- Fantasy Genre
- Media – Age and Gender
Stage 5 (Mandatory)
Year 9
- Documenting Our World
- Survival
- Crime Genre
- Area of Study - Power
Year 10
- Innocence and Experience
- Discrimination
- Composer Study
- Area of Study - Journeys
Stage 6 (Mandatory)
Year 11
- English Studies (recommended for Non-ATAR students only)
- Standard English
- Advanced English
- English Extension 1 (Advanced English students only)
Year 12
- English Studies (recommended for Non-ATAR students only)
- Standard English
- Advanced English
- English Extension 1 (Advanced English students only)
Subjects in Detail
Stage 4
Year 7 English (Mandatory)
Term 1: What’s Your Story?
This unit focuses on autobiographical representations of lived experiences. It involves students reflecting on their cultural background, past experiences, identity and how they fit into their new school environment. We explore a variety of ways in which life experiences can be represented through different text types, language and grammatical structures. Students write a recount text that uses descriptive language, making deliberate choices about language, image and sound. They write a reflective piece of writing, assisting them to emotionally engage with the subject of English at the beginning of their high school.
Term 2: Are You Talking to Me?
This unit will use a novel to allow students to examine resilience strategies in coping with change, hardship and, specifically, bullying. It explores difference and diversity through imaginative thinking and writing. The key idea is the power of stories to develop self-awareness and empathy, as well as the ways in which novels explore universal themes and personal and social realities. Students identify, consider and appreciate cultural expressions in texts and the ways in which fictional worlds can explore experiences of the world. They will investigate narrative devices, including characterization, dialogue and descriptive writing, and think about narrative forms, features and structures, developing skills in writing their own stories.
Term 3: Freak Out!
This unit focuses on developing an understanding of genre and the conventions of the gothic, and later the horror, genre. We explore the features of a range of short scary texts to establish how the conventions are realized in a range of media: film, poetry, short stories, drama, etc.
We examine context and how it influences the ideas and conventions of texts and contributes to the realization of characters, plots and situations. Students look at the variety of ways fear can be explored and represented in texts and write creatively, making conscious language choices.
Term 4: Words Around the World
This unit focuses on poems and dramatic texts as reflections of their country of origin. Students engage with a variety of texts and experience and understand different cultural perspectives. They learn about different poetic techniques and structures and use existing poetic and dramatic conventions when writing their own texts. We examine different cultures and look at how people represent their culture in poems and plays through structure, technique and other language choices.
Year 8 English (Mandatory)
Term 1: Through our Eyes – Australian Identity
This unit focuses on the ways culture is communicated through textual features. We explore the features of a range of text types to develop an understanding of the ways different texts reflect the culture, following of the evolution of Australian culture from its Aboriginal and white settler roots, to its more diverse multiculturalism of modern times. We consider context and form and how they influence the ideas of Australian texts. Students individually and collaboratively analyse and perform texts, making deliberate language choices, creating a visual or digital text that reflects their own Australian context.
Term 2: Conflict
This unit explores the nature of conflict and how it is represented in a variety of texts. We identify different types of conflict, such as Man versus Man (focusing on family and society), man against nature and science (or family/society) and then looking at internal conflict as man struggles against his own values and beliefs. The main focus areas of fiction, drama and film show the common ways in which conflict is conveyed and described. The language of conflict is explored, as well as the choices made by composers as to how conflict is portrayed visually to an audience.
Term 3: The Fantasy Genre
This unit explores the fantasy genre. Students look at tropes/conventions of the genre and experience a number of texts that explore this genre. They examine the ways fantasy is conveyed through film, prose, poetry, drama and still image, developing their own ideas through creative and critical writing. They workshop their creative writing and use tropes to improve and display their understanding of the genre.
Term 4: Media Mind Games – Age and Gender
This unit focuses on mass media and its impact on society, specifically gender stereotypes. It looks at advertising and the common messages being sent to different age groups. Students learn about different visual literacy components and compose texts using these components and considerations.
Stage 5
Year 9
Term 1: Documenting our World
This unit of work focuses on developing an answer to the driving question, How can we make a powerful documentary? Student responses will take the form of an essay or a group-created documentary on an issue relating to society, environmental or social sustainability relevant to their local area. This unit uses the students’ role as responder and composer, therefore sharpening their analytic and creative thinking skills. Students develop responsibility for their own learning and submit an essay, script or storyboard for a documentary, focusing on their analytical writing.
Term 2: Survival
The unit is concerned with the representations of survivors in global, national and personal contexts. Students critically analyse the power of language to persuade and position audiences, recognising and analysing how texts can be read or composed from different perspectives which reflect the values, attitudes and experiences of a society. Students identify and investigate representations of survival issues in a variety of texts and the personal, social and cultural perspectives and values underlying these representations. They recognise and think critically about powerful persuasive techniques, rhetorical devices and manipulations and how they are used to influence responders to accept the composer’s perspective of the issue.
Term 3: Crime Genre
This unit focuses on developing an understanding of genre and the conventions of the crime genre. We explore a features of a range of short crime texts to establish how the conventions are realized in a range of media: film, poetry, short stories, drama, etc. We consider context and how it influences the ideas and conventions of crime texts and the exploration of ethical issues surrounding the concept of crime. Students develop an understanding of generic conventions and style in creative writing, constructing multimodal stories and making deliberate choices about language, image and sound.
Term 4: Area of Study – Power
This unit focuses on the concept of power and its many forms within a society. The balance of power, abuse of power, the consequences and effects of power on individuals will explored in contexts over a range of different mediums. Students explore the ways individuals represent their experiences of power through different text types, language and narrative structures. They
individually and collaboratively discuss and annotate texts, making deliberate choices about language and techniques in their exploration of power through a variety of material.
Year 10
Term 1: Stories of Innocence and Experience
This unit focuses on the role of the storyteller and the story in society. Through responding to a variety of stories from around the world in a range of modes and media, students develop an appreciation of story and the features of engaging stories. They will compose their own imaginative texts and understand the concept of representation for innocence and experience, writing a recount text that uses descriptive language. Students individually and collaboratively construct multimodal stories, making deliberate choices about language, image and sound.
Term 2: Discrimination
This unit focuses on the ways issues of discrimination are represented in and through a variety of texts. Students broaden their understanding of the world around them and study the various kinds of discrimination which plague our society. They will explore three kinds of discrimination in depth (gender, age, sexuality, disability and racial/ cultural discrimination) from different perspectives. Students reflect on their individual and collaborative learning skills as a way to expand their skills, knowledge and understanding of important social issues.
Term 3: Composer Study
In this unit, students focus their study on the distinctive features and context of a single composer. Students enhance their understanding of the ways composers use form, language features and structures to shape meaning in response to their own context.
Term 4: Area of Study – Journeys
Through this focus, students explore the ways in which texts depict journeys, taking us out of our comfort zones into worlds of imagination, speculation and inspiration. Students explore the challenging nature of journeys and their ability to shape and transform the individual, reflecting on the ways journeys broaden their understanding of the world and themselves. By exploring the concept of journeys, students can understand how texts have the potential to affirm or challenge assumptions and beliefs about aspects of human experience and the world. Through composing and responding to a wide range of texts, students make discoveries about people, relationships, societies and places and events. Students consider the ways composers may invite them to experience journeys through their texts and explore how the concept is represented using a variety of language modes, forms and features.
Stage 6
English Studies (recommended for Non-ATAR students only)
This course provides students with the opportunity to consolidate their language, literacy and literature skills through responding to and composing a wide variety of oral, written and multimodal texts, including literary, digital and media texts. The course supports students to refine their skills and knowledge in English and empowers them to comprehend, interpret and evaluate the ideas, values, language forms, features and structures of texts from various contexts.
Standard English
This course provides students with the opportunity to explore and experiment with the ways events, experiences, ideas and processes are represented in and through a range of texts. Students strengthen their knowledge and understanding of language and literature by responding to and composing a wide variety of texts for different audiences and purposes.
Advanced English
This course provides students with the opportunity to explore, examine and analyse a range of texts which include prose fiction, drama, poetry, nonfiction, film, media and multimedia, as well as Australian texts. Students strengthen their knowledge and understanding of language and literature by analysing and evaluating texts and the ways they are valued in their contexts.
English Extension 1 (Advanced English students only)
The English Extension course provides students with the opportunity to further strengthen their understanding of how and why aspects and concerns of texts from the past have been carried forward, borrowed from and/or appropriated into more recent cultures. In Extension 1 they extend their understanding of the ways that texts contribute to their awareness of the diversity of ideas, attitudes and perspectives evident in texts.
English Extension 2 (Advanced and Extension 1 students only/Year 12 only)
In Extension 2 students undertake independent investigation to develop a sustained composition and document this process in their Major Work Journal and Reflection Statement.
English Life Skills (Life Skills students only)
The Stage 6 English Life Skills course focuses on the development of effective communication and literacy skills to enhance students' participation in all aspects of post-school life. The course emphasises the ability to communicate effectively in a range of contexts through different modes and media. Students are provided with opportunities to comprehend and interpret a variety of texts and develop an understanding of the ways in which language forms and features shape meaning in texts. Study in this course enables students to access information, engage in a range of recreational and leisure activities and undertake further education, training and employment.