English Language Course Catalogue
VCE English Language explores the ways in which language is used by individuals and groups and reflects our
thinking and values. Learning about language helps us to understand ourselves, the groups with which we identify
and the society we inhabit.
English Language builds on students’ previous learning about the conventions and codes used by speakers
and writers of English. Informed by the discipline of linguistics, it provides students with metalinguistic tools to
understand and analyse language use, variation and change. Students studying English Language examine how
uses and interpretations of language are nuanced and complex rather than a series of fixed conventions. Students
explore how people use spoken and written English to communicate, to think and innovate, to construct identities,
to build and interrogate attitudes and assumptions and to create and disrupt social cohesion.
The study of English Language enables students to understand the structures, features and discourses of written
and spoken texts through the systematic and objective deconstruction of language in use.
The VCE study design is made up of four units:
Unit 1 : Language and communication
Unit 2 : Language change
Unit 3 : Language variation and social purpose
Unit 4 : Language variation and identity
