This course supports students as they move into the domains of high school curriculum. The demands of literacy across all subject areas is one of the reasons many students feel unable to cope with the changing methods of classroom delivery, complex teacher language and the expected standard of all written assignment work.

This course specifically provides students with the knowledge and skills to approach all tasks with confidence and competence and to engage in all key learning areas in ways that teach them the essence of what high school literacy and literature is all about.

Since the implementation of the Australian Curriculum there is now a stronger focus on students continuing to build their core basic skills in understanding grammar at a higher-order level to construct quality pieces of text that demonstrate their ability to enhance writing through the application of language forms and features. This has been a neglected area of high school English for many years, but is now seen by NESA as crucial in ensuring students become proficient users of English in both written and oral forms.

In ascertaining the skills that high school students demonstrate on entering Year 7, all students across Australia sit NAPLAN at the beginning of Term 2. The Year 7 program includes a vital segment each session, during Term 1, on developing the primary skills required to perform well in this assessment. Students are explicitly trained in all of the comprehension and grammar techniques as well as in the use of the Criterion Marking Method for assessing their writing tasks.

Another key facet of the Australian Curriculum for Stage 4 is the introduction of more media-based and visual texts. This course in Level 7 will now cover many key aspects of the syllabus outcomes in this area to ensure students are fully conversant with recognising and analysing a range of techniques for studying visual texts, and in using multi-modalities in their own creation of visual and media-based texts.