Texts

Teachers will use an array of material in class. Texts include literary texts, fiction and non-fiction, media texts, everyday texts, and workplace texts, from increasingly complex and unfamiliar settings, ranging from the everyday language of personal experience to more abstract, specialised and technical language drawn from a range of contexts.

Texts provide important opportunities for learning about aspects of human experience and about aesthetic appeal. Texts can be written, spoken, multimodal, and in print or digital/online.

Texts are structured for particular purposes; for example, to retell, to instruct, to entertain, to explain and to argue. Teachers may select whole texts or parts of texts depending on units of study, cohorts and level of difficulty.

‘Literary texts’ refer to past and present texts across a range of cultural contexts that are valued for their form and style and are recognised as having enduring or artistic value. While the nature of what constitutes ‘literary texts’ is dynamic and evolving, they are seen as having personal, social, cultural and aesthetic appeal and potential for enriching students’ scope of experience. Literary texts include a broad range of forms such as novels, poetry, short stories, plays, fiction, multimodal texts such as film, and non-fiction.

Sample text list

The following texts are examples of literary texts suitable for the study of EAL/D and are intended to stimulate thinking about teaching resources in relation to the content of the curriculum. The following examples are not meant to be prescriptive.

Fiction
Blueback by Tim Winton (novel)
Walk in My Shoes by Alwyn Evans (novel)
The China Coin by Allan Baillie (novel)
Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie (novel)
The Whale Rider by Witi Ihimaera (novel; film directed by Niki Caro)
Adaptations of Shakespeare such as the film of Twelfth Night directed by Trevor Nunn
The Black Balloon directed by Elissa Down (film)
The River by Libby Hathorn and illustrated by Stanley Wong (picture book)
Tales from Outer Suburbia by Shaun Tan (short stories)
One Night the Moon directed by Rachel Perkins (film; also see soundtrack)
Billy Elliot directed by Stephen Daldry (film)
Harvey Krumpet created and directed by Adam Eliot (clay animation)
Poetry
The Simple Gift by Steven Herrick
Oodgeroo Noonuccal
At the Round Earth's Imagined Corners: A Multicultural Anthology of Contemporary Poetry edited by Ken Watson
Bush songs and music: http://australia.gov.au/about-australia/australian-story/bush-songs-and-music
Robert Frost
Windchimes: Asia in Australian poetry edited by Rowe and Smith
Non-fiction
Unpolished Gem by Alice Pung (memoir)
Maybe Tomorrow by Boori Monty Pryor and Meme McDonald (autobiography)
Freedom From Fear by Aung San Suu Kyi (speech)
I am Eleven directed by Genevieve Bailey (documentary)
A World without Water directed by Brian Woods (documentary)
The Legacy: An elder’s vision of our sustainable future by David Suzuki (lecture)
Making Multicultural Australia: www.multiculturalaustralia.edu.auv The Happiest Refugee: A Memoir by Anh Do