Responding to texts

Students consider a variety of ways in which texts communicate information, ideas, and perspectives. They explore the relationship between structures and features and the purpose, audience, and context of texts.

The reading of a wide range of texts enables students to comprehend and interpret information, ideas, and perspectives in texts. They locate and extract information and ideas by, for example, skim-reading to support comprehension of key information. They also develop strategies for collecting and processing information by, for example, the use of graphic organisers.

Students examine and respond to how language is used in social, cultural, community, workplace, and/or imagined contexts. They identify and develop an understanding of ways in which:

• language is used and composed for different purposes, audiences, and contexts
• structural and language features are used to create meaning.

Students review texts in one or more contexts to discover how these texts achieve a specific purpose. Students may, for example, examine:

• image selection in websites
• emotive language in speeches or films
• structures of community texts (e.g. newsletters from sporting teams)
• stereotypes in advertisements
• vocabulary choices in workplace documents
• graphical representation of key information or ideas in a magazine article
• the use of textual conventions (e.g. perspectives in film, fiction, or video games).

Students question texts and/or purposes of texts, and develop a fuller understanding of the texts by predicting meaning, using their understanding of conventions and language features. Students use visual and aural cues, and summarise information, ideas, and perspectives in texts. They identify the main ideas, make inferences, and draw conclusions. In examining texts, students develop an understanding of how authors communicate, reflecting critically and responding to explicit and implied messages within the text.

Students have opportunities to develop understanding and appreciation of the diversity of cultures, including Indigenous cultures, that make up Australian society.