Language Text Structures Progression

CONTENTS

  1. NOUNS
  2. ADJECTIVES
  3. VERBS AND ADVERBS
  4. SENTENCES AND CLAUSES
  5. PUNCTUATION
  6. VOCABULARY FOR MEANING
  7. TEXT STRUCTURES FOR PURPOSE

This progression contains the key elements in grammar and text structure as listed above. It provides descriptions and definitions of these, sequencing curriculum requirements for each element and offering some suggestions for how they may be taught.

 

1. Nouns

Nouns name physical objects (concrete nouns), intangibles (abstract nouns): these are common nouns. Proper nouns denote particular persons, places, days/months and events and start with a capital letter.

Pronouns take the place of nouns: there are different types of pronouns-personal pronouns (for example, I, me, she, her, they and many others); demonstrative pronouns represent a thing or things (for example, this, that, these, those); possessive pronouns refer to the belonging of one person or thing to another person or thing (for example, mine, hers, his, ours ); reflexive pronouns refer back to the subject of a sentence or clause and end in ‘self’ or ‘selves’ (for example, myself, himself); reciprocal pronouns refer to two subjects acting in the same way towards each other (for example, each other, one another); relative pronouns introduce a relative clause (these are who, whom, those, which, that); interrogative pronouns represent things that we do not know and are asking questions about (for example, who, whom, whose, which, that); indefinite pronouns do not refer to any specific person, thing or amount (for example, all, another, anybody, each, many).

 

Australian Curriculum Requirement Year 1 / NSW Syllabus Stage 1 Spelling, punctuation and vocabulary

ACELA1452 Explore differences in words that represent people, places and things (nouns including pronouns, happenings and states (verbs), qualities (adjectives) and details such as where, when and how (adverbs).

Suggestions: Talk about effective words that describe a place, person or event. Identify nouns in texts.

 

Australian Curriculum Requirement Year 2 / NSW Syllabus Stage 1 Reading and Viewing

ACELA1468 Understand that nouns represent people, places, concrete objects and abstract objects; that there are three types of nouns: common, proper and pronouns; and that noun groups/phrases can be expanded using articles and adjectives.

Suggestions: Identify nouns in texts, illustrations of nouns in texts, explore names of people and places and use capital letters in writing names, build extended noun groups/phrases to provide a clear description of an item.

 

Australian Curriculum Requirement Year 2 / NSW Syllabus Stage 1 Spelling, punctuation and vocabulary

ACELA1465 Recognise that capital letters signal proper nouns and commas are used to separate items in lists.

Suggestions: Identify proper nouns in texts.

 

Australian Curriculum Requirement Year 3 / NSW Syllabus Stage 2 Grammar, Punctuation and Vocabulary

ACELA1493 Understand that the meaning of sentences can be enriched through the use of noun groups/phrases and verb groups/phrases and prepositional phrases.

Suggestions: Create richer, more specific descriptions through the use of noun groups/phrases (for example in narrative texts, ‘their very old Siamese cat’, in reports, ‘its extremely high mountain ranges’).

 

Australian Curriculum Requirement Year 5 / NSW Syllabus Stage 3 Grammar, Punctuation and Vocabulary

ACELA1508 Understand how noun groups/phrases can be expanded in a variety of ways to provide a fuller description of the person, place, thing or idea.

Suggestions: Expand a description by combining a related set of nouns and adjectives- ‘Two old brown cattle dogs sat on the ruined front veranda of the deserted house’; observe how descriptive details can be built up around a noun or an adjective, forming a group/phrase (for example, ‘this very small cleaning cloth in the sink’ is a noun group/phrase and ‘as pretty as the flowers in May’ is an adjective group/phrase).

 

2. Adjectives

Adjectives describe, identify or quantify a noun or pronoun. Types of adjectives include: number or quantity adjectives (for example, twelve, several ), possessive adjectives (for example, my, his), descriptive adjectives (for example, beautiful, ancient), comparative adjectives (for example, shorter, more difficult), classifying adjectives (for example, wooden (box), passenger (vehicle).

 

Australian Curriculum Requirement Year 1 / NSW Syllabus Stage 1 Spelling, punctuation and vocabulary

ACELA1452 Explore differences in words that represent people, places and things (nouns including pronouns, happenings and states (verbs), qualities (adjectives) and details such as where, when and how (adverbs).

Suggestions: Talk about effective words that describe a place, person or event. Identify nouns in texts.

 

Australian Curriculum Requirement Year 2 / NSW Syllabus Stage 1 Reading and Viewing

ACELA1468 Understand that nouns represent people, places, concrete objects and abstract objects; that there are three types of nouns: common, proper and pronouns; and that noun groups/phrases can be expanded using articles and adjectives.

Suggestions: Identify nouns in texts, illustrations of nouns in texts, explore names of people and places and use capital letters in writing names, build extended noun groups/phrases to provide a clear description of an item.

 

Australian Curriculum Requirement Year 5 / NSW Syllabus Stage 3 Grammar, Punctuation and Vocabulary

ACELA1508 Understand how noun groups/phrases can be expanded in a variety of ways to provide a fuller description of the person, place, thing or idea.

Suggestions: Expand a description by combining a related set of nouns and adjectives– ‘Two old brown cattle dogs sat on the ruined front veranda of the deserted house’; observe how descriptive details can be built up around a noun or an adjective, forming a group/phrase (for example, ‘this very small cleaning cloth in the sink’ is a noun group/phrase and ‘as pretty as the flowers in May’ is an adjective group/phrase).

 

3. Verbs and Adverbs

Verbs describe a happening (for example, ‘climbed’ as in ‘she climbed the ladder’), or a state (for example,’ is’ in ‘a koala is a mammal’). Verbs are essential for clause structure (exception- some ellipses types), almost all have past and present tense forms, other verbs have irregular forms indicating a change in tense and present and past participles (see ‘Tense”). Auxiliary verbs, known as helping verbs precede the main verb (for example- ‘draw’ is helped in ‘has drawn’). Modal verbs express a degree of probability (for example, ‘I might come home’) or a degree of obligation (for example, ‘You must give it to me’).

Verb groups consist of a main verb alone or preceded by one or more auxiliary or modal verbs as in: creating tense in ‘He (was happy)’, expressing modality in ‘He (will have arrived) by now’ and ‘’She (may know) them’ and creating a passive voice in ‘A photo (was taken)’.

Adverbs may modify a verb (for example, ‘beautifully’ in ‘She sings beautifully’, an adjective (for example ‘really’ in ‘he is really interesting’), or another adverb (for example, ‘very’ in ‘she walks very slowly’). Many adverbs have an ‘ly’ ending. Adverbials are words or groups of words that contribute additional, but non-essential, information about a sentence or a verb and are classified on the basis of the kind of meaning involved including time, duration, frequency, place, manner, degree, reason, purpose, condition and concession. Adverbials usually have the form of; an adverb group or phrase with the adverb as the head word, a prepositional phrase, a noun group/phrase or a subordinate clause.

 

Australian Curriculum Requirement Year 1 / NSW Syllabus Stage 1 Spelling, Punctuation and Vocabulary

ACELA1452 Explore differences in words that represent people, places and things (nouns including pronouns, happenings and states (verbs), qualities (adjectives) and details such as where, when and how (adverbs).

Suggestions: Talk about effective words that describe a place, person or event. Identify nouns in texts.

 

Australian Curriculum Requirement Year 3 / NSW Syllabus Stage 2 Grammar, Punctuation and Vocabulary

ACELA1493 Understand that the meaning of sentences can be enriched through the use of noun groups/phrases and verb groups/phrases and prepositional phrases.

Suggestions: Create richer, more specific descriptions through the use of noun groups/phrases (for example in narrative texts, ‘their very old Siamese cat’, in reports, ‘its extremely high mountain ranges’).

 

Australian Curriculum Requirement Year 3 / NSW Syllabus Stage 2 Grammar, Punctuation and Vocabulary

ACELA1495 Understand how adverb groups/phrases and prepositional phrases work in different ways to provide circumstantial details about an activity.

Suggestion: Investigate in texts how adverb group/phrases and prepositional phrases can provide details about the circumstances surrounding a happening or state.

Tense is a grammatical category marked by a verb in which the situation described in the clause is located in time; in the past, present or future.

 

Australian Curriculum Requirement Year 3 / NSW Syllabus Stage 2 Grammar, Punctuation and Vocabulary

ACELA1482 Understand that verbs represent different processes, for example doing, thinking, saying and relating and that these processes are anchored in time through tense.

Suggestions: Identify types of verbs and how they add meaning to a sentence, explore doing and saying verbs in texts to show how they give information about what characters do and say, explore the use of sensing verbs and how they allow readers to know what characters think and feel, explore the use of relating verbs in constructing definitions and descriptions. Learn how time is represented through the tense of a verb, for example ‘She arrived’, ‘She is arriving’ and adverbials of time, for example ‘She arrived yesterday’, ‘She is arriving in the morning’.

 

Australian Curriculum Requirement Year 5 / NSW Syllabus Stage 3 Grammar, Punctuation and Vocabulary

ACELA1508 Understand how noun groups/phrases can be expanded in a variety of ways to provide a fuller description of the person, place, thing or idea.

Suggestions: Expand a description by combining a related set of nouns and adjectives- ‘Two old brown cattle dogs sat on the ruined front veranda of the deserted house’; observe how descriptive details can be built up around a noun or an adjective, forming a group/phrase (for example, ‘this very small cleaning cloth in the sink’ is a noun group/phrase and ‘as pretty as the flowers in May’ is an adjective group/phrase).

 

Australian Curriculum Requirement Year 6 / NSW Syllabus Stage 3 Grammar, Punctuation and Vocabulary

ACELA1523 Understand how ideas can be expanded and sharpened through careful choice of verbs, elaborated tenses and a range of adverb groups/phrases.

Suggestions: Know that choice of more expressive verbs makes an action more expressive, know that adverb groups/phrases and prepositional phrases can provide important detail about a happening and know the difference between the simple present tense and the simple past tense. Know that the simple present tense is typically used to talk about either present states, actions that happen regularly in the present or that represent ‘timeless’ happenings as in information reports. Know that there are various ways in English to refer to future time.

 

4. Sentences and Clauses

A Sentence is a set of words that is complete in itself, typically containing a subject and a predicate, conveying a statement, question, exclamation or command, and consisting of a main clause and sometimes one or more subordinate clause (Oxford Dictionary). A clause is the smallest grammatical unit that can express a complete proposition.

Australian Curriculum Requirement Year 1 / NSW Syllabus Stage 1 Reading and Viewing 1)

ACELA1451 Identify the parts of a simple sentence that represent ‘What’s happening?’, ‘What state is being described?’, ‘Who or what is being described?’, ‘Who or what is involved?’ and the surrounding circumstances.

Suggestions: Understand that, in terms of meaning, a basic clause represents: a happening or a state (verb), who or what is involved (noun group/phrase), and the surrounding circumstances (adverb group/phrase). Identify simple sentences each expressing a single idea represented grammatically by a single independent clause (for example ‘A kangaroo is a mammal. A mammal suckles its young.’).

A compound sentence contains two or more clauses of equal grammatical status, usually marked by a coordinating conjunction such as ‘and’, ‘but’ or ‘or’.

 

Australian Curriculum Requirement Year 2 / NSW Syllabus Stage 1 Grammar, Punctuation and Vocabulary

ACELA1467 Understand that single connections can be made between ideas by using a compound sentence with two or more clauses usually linked by a coordinating conjunction.

Suggestions: Identify compound sentences in texts and practice joining simple sentences with conjunctions, for example ‘and’, ‘but’ or ‘so’.

 

Australian Curriculum Requirement Year 3 / NSW Syllabus Stage 2 Grammar, Punctuation and Vocabulary

ACELA1481 Understand that a clause is a unit of grammar usually containing subject and a verb and that these need to be in agreement.

Suggestions: Know that a clause is basically a group of words that contains a verb and has meaning as a unit, and it represents what is happening, what state is being described, or who or what is involved, and the surrounding circumstances.

 

Australian Curriculum Requirement Year 4 / NSW Syllabus Stage 2 Reading and Viewing

ACELA1491 Understand how texts are made cohesive through the use of linking devices including pronoun references and text connectives.

Suggestions: Identify how authors construct cohesive and coherent texts through the use of pronouns that link to something previously mentioned, determiners (for example ‘this’, ‘that’, ‘theses’, ‘those’, ‘the’) and text connectives that create links between sentences (for example ‘however’, ‘therefore’, ‘nevertheless’, ‘in addition’, ‘by contrast’, ‘in summary’). Identify how participants are tracked through the text by using pronouns and connectives to time sequence.

 

Australian Curriculum Requirement Year 5 / NSW Syllabus Stage 3 Grammar, Punctuation and Vocabulary

ACELA1507 Understand the difference between main and subordinate clauses and that a complex sentence involves at least one subordinate clause.

Suggestions: Know that complex sentences may make connections between ideas to: provide a reason, to state a purpose, to express a condition, to make a concession, to make connections in time. Understand that a complex sentence usually consists of a main clause and a subordinate clause.

 

Australian Curriculum Requirement Year 5 / NSW Syllabus Stage 3 Reading and Viewing

ACELA1505 Understand the starting point of a sentence gives prominence to the message in the text and allows for prediction of how the text will unfold.

Suggestions: Identify how writers use the beginning of a sentence to signal how the text is developing.

 

Australian Curriculum Requirement Year 6 / NSW Syllabus Stage 3 Writing and Representing

ACELA1522 Investigate how complex sentences can be used in a variety of ways to elaborate, expand and explain ideas.

Suggestions: Investigate how the choice of conjunctions enables complex sentences to elaborate, expand and extend ideas.

 

5. Punctuation

Punctuation is a system of inserting marks or points in writing or printing in order to make the meaning clear. (Macquarie Dictionary)Australian Curriculum Requirement Year 1 / NSW Syllabus Stage 1 Grammar, Punctuation and Vocabulary

 

ACELA1449 Recognise that different types of punctuation, including full stops, question marks and exclamation marks, signal sentences that make statements, ask questions, express emotion or give commands.

Suggestions: Use intonation and pauses in response to punctuation when reading, identify different sentence-level punctuation in texts when reading, and write different types of sentences (for example questions and exclamations) and discuss punctuation.

 

Australian Curriculum Requirement Year 2 / NSW Syllabus Stage 1 Spelling, punctuation and Vocabulary

ACELA1465 Recognise that capital letters signal proper nouns and commas are used to separate items in lists.

Suggestions: Identify proper nouns in texts.

 

Apostrophes are punctuation marks used to indicate that a noun owns something or to indicate that they are replacing omitted letters in words.

 

Australian Curriculum Requirement Year 3 / NSW Syllabus Stage 2 Reading and Viewing

ACELA1480 Know that word contractions are a feature of informal language and that apostrophes of contractions are used to signal missing letters.

Suggestions: Recognise both grammatically accurate and inaccurate usage of apostrophe in everyday texts such as signs in the community and newspapers and advertisements.

 

Australian Curriculum Requirement Year 5 / NSW Syllabus Stage 3 Grammar, Punctuation and Vocabulary

ACELA1506 Understand how the grammatical category of possessives is signalled through apostrophes and how to use apostrophes with common and proper nouns.

Suggestions: Learn that regular plural nouns ending in ‘s’ form the possessive by adding just the apostrophe, for example ‘my parents’ car’ and for proper nouns the regular possessive is always possible, but a variant form without the second ‘s’ is sometimes found, for example James’s house or James’ house.

 

Commas

 

Australian Curriculum Requirement Year 2 / NSW Syllabus Stage 1 Spelling, punctuation and Vocabulary

ACELA1465 Recognise that capital letters signal proper nouns and commas are used to separate items in lists.

Suggestions: Identify proper nouns in texts.

 

Australian Curriculum Requirement Year 6 / NSW Syllabus Stage 3 Grammar, Punctuation and Vocabulary

ACELA1521 Understand the use of commas to separate clauses.

Suggestions: Identify the different uses of commas in texts.

 

Quotation marks

 

Australian Curriculum Requirement Year 3 / NSW Syllabus Stage 2 Reading and Viewing

ACELA1492 Recognise how quotation marks are used in texts to signal dialogue, titles and quoted (direct) speech.

Suggestions: Explore texts to identify the use of quotation marks and experiment with the use of quotation marks in writing.

 

Australian Curriculum Requirement Year4 / NSW Syllabus Stage 2 Grammar, Punctuation and Vocabulary

ACELA1494 Investigate how quoted (direct) and reported (indirect) speech work in different types of text.

Suggestions: Identify examples of direct and reported speech and compare similarities and differences.

 

6. Vocabulary for Meaning

 

Australian Curriculum Requirement Year 5 / NSW Syllabus Stage 3 Grammar, Punctuation and Vocabulary

ACELY1698 Show how ideas and points of view in texts are conveyed through the use of vocabulary including idiomatic expressions, objective and subjective language, and that these can change according to context.

Suggestions: Identify the narrative voice (the person or entity through whom the audience experiences the story) in a literary work, discussing the impact of first person narration on empathy and engagement.

 

Australian Curriculum Requirement Year 6 / NSW Syllabus Stage 3 Grammar, Punctuation and Vocabulary

ACELA1525 Investigate how vocabulary choices, including evaluative language can express shades of meaning, feeling and opinion.

Suggestions: Identify (for example, from reviews) the ways in which evaluative language is used to assess the qualities of the various aspects of the work in question.

 

7. Text Structures for Purpose

Texts may be grouped by genre for their purpose to recount, to describe, to persuade or to narrate. They may be grouped by subject matter for example science fiction, fantasy fiction, romance fiction etc. or by their form and structure for example, poetry, novels or short stories.

 

Australian Curriculum Requirement Year 1 / NSW Syllabus Stage 1 Writing and Representing

ACELA1463 Understand that different types of texts have identifiable text structures and language features that help the text serve its purpose.

Suggestions: Identify the topic and type of a text through its visual presentation, for example cover design, packaging, titles/subtitles and images. Become familiar with the typical stages of text types, for example simple narratives, instructions and expositions.

 

Australian Curriculum Requirement Year 1 / NSW Syllabus Stage 1 Reading and Viewing

ACELA1450 Understand concepts about print and screen, including how different types of texts are organised using page numbering, tables of contents, headings and titles, navigation buttons, bars and links.

Suggestions: Identify how books and digital texts are organised including page numbers, table of contents, headings, images with captions and the use of scrolling to access digital texts.

 

Australian Curriculum Requirement Year 2 / NSW Syllabus Stage 1 Reading and Viewing

ACELA1466 Know some features of text organisation including page and screen layouts, alphabetical order, and different types of diagrams, for example timelines.

Suggestions: Recognise how chapters and table of contents, alphabetical order of index and glossary operate to guide access to information and identify features of screen texts including menu buttons, links and live connections.

 

Australian Curriculum Requirement Year 2 / NSW Syllabus Stage1 Grammar, Punctuation and Vocabulary

ACELA1464 Understand how texts are made cohesive through resources, for example word associations, synonyms and antonyms.

Suggestions: Explore how texts develop their themes and ideas, building information through connecting similar and contrasting dissimilar things. Map examples of word associations in texts, for example words that refer to the main character.

 

Paragraphs

 

Australian Curriculum Requirement Year 3 / NSW Syllabus Stage 2 Grammar, Punctuation and Vocabulary

ACELA1479 Understand that paragraphs are a key organisational feature of written texts.

Suggestions: Identify how longer texts are organised into paragraphs, each beginning with a topic sentence/paragraph opener which predicts how the paragraph will develop and is then elaborated on in various ways.

 

Visual techniques

 

Australian Curriculum Requirement Year 3 / NSW Syllabus Stage 2 Reading and Viewing

ACELA1496 Explore the effect of choices when framing an image, placement of elements in the image, and salience on composition of still and moving images in a range of types of texts.

Suggestions: Explore visual and multimodal texts, building a vocabulary to describe visual elements and techniques such as framing, composition and visual point of view and beginning to understand how these choices impact on viewer response.

 

Online navigational features

ACELA1790 Identify the features of online texts that enhance navigation.

Suggestions: Become familiar with the typical features of online texts, for example, navigation bars and buttons, hyperlinks and sitemaps.