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NSW Curriculum
NSW Education Standards Authority

11–12English EAL/D 11–12 Syllabus

Record of changes
Implementation from 2026
Expand for detailed implementation advice

Content

Year 12

Texts and human experiences

Students interpret and respond to texts that examine what it means to be human. They experiment with different approaches to textual appreciation and analysis, consolidating and building on skills in reading, speaking, listening, viewing, responding and composing. They undertake the study of ONE prescribed text and explore a range of short texts in a variety of forms and media. Students examine how texts provide insight into emotional, intellectual, physical, cultural and lived experiences and draw from personal experience to make connections between themselves, the world of the text and their wider world.

They consider the role of storytelling throughout time in communicating and reflecting the human experience. They explore how texts represent the tension between agency and conformity in our human experience, while examining the paradoxes of motivation and behaviour. Explicit, targeted English language study centres on structural, stylistic and linguistic elements, including the use of descriptive and expressive language in spoken and written texts. Students analyse texts, comparing and contrasting the ways composers, narrators and personas represent insights into the human experience and explore their own assumptions about the possibilities of human experience.

Understanding
  • Comparative, temporal and consequential conjunctions

  • The impact of direct and indirect speech

  • The use of literary and persuasive features, including rhetorical devices, figurative language and dramatic irony, in familiar and unfamiliar texts

  • The ways arguments are presented in nonfiction texts

Responding
  • Compose creative, informed and sustained interpretations of texts supported by integrated textual evidence

  • Apply a range of language features in own compositions

  • Make connections with other texts through language, form and structure

  • Use cohesive links and discourse markers to show cause and effect in spoken and written texts

  • Use metalanguage to interpret texts and evaluate their own learning

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