BBE's New VCE Publications

written by Nicole Hacking with Janny McCurry

This textbook has been written expressly for the 2024 VCE English Language Study Design by experienced classroom teachers and VCAA assessors. It is a practical text designed for classroom use, and to support students’ independent study.

Students use the key concepts and metalanguage as they learn about them, to identify and describe language use in an objective and a systematic way through spoken and written Australian texts.

Metalanguage checklists and pre-tests for each Area of Study are provided to promote student reflection and self-sufficiency.

The book has sections on ways to compose analytical commentaries and essays, with tips for structuring short answer question responses. Tasks for practice SACs and sample responses are provided for each Area of Study.

In addition, the final section covers essential revision techniques, focussing on the role of graphic organisers in consolidating student knowledge.

A substantial glossary accompanies the text, and the text itself is clearly indexed to let students and teachers locate relevant information easily.

QR links give ready access to presentations and other materials, and updates for the life of the course so that the book remains current.

Unit 3 covers

• purposes and intents of language
• features of informality and formality
• the role of Standard English
• politeness strategies
• linguistic innovation
• sample student assessed coursework

Unit 4 covers

• the features of Standard Australian English
• the ways in which a variety of national, individual and social identities are conveyed and reflected in Australian texts
• Broad, General and Cultivated Australian English accents
• Aboriginal Australian Englishes and migrant ethnolects
• variation in language according to age, gender, sexuality, occupation, interests, aspirations and education
• attitudes towards varieties of English
• overt and covert norms
• code switching
• how language is shaped by social expectations and community attitudes
• the impact of global contact and modern technologies

ISBN: 978-0-6452433-1-4

$49.95 plus postage and handling.

written by Janny McCurry with Nicole Hacking

This textbook has been written expressly for the 2024 VCE English Language Study Design by experienced classroom teachers and VCAA assessors. It is a practical text designed for classroom use, and to support students’ independent study.

Students use the key concepts and metalanguage as they learn about them, to identify and describe language use in an objective and a systematic way through spoken and written Australian texts. The book has sections on  ways to compose analytical commentaries and essays, with tasks for practice SACs and sample responses.

A substantial glossary accompanies the text, and the text itself is clearly indexed to let students and teachers locate relevant information easily.

QR links give ready access to presentations and other materials, and updates for the life of the course so that the book remains current.

Unit 1 covers

• the language sub-systems, metalanguage and linguistic concepts, with special emphasis given to grammar (ie morphology, lexicology and syntax)
• the nature and functions of language
• factors that influence language choices in discourse
• differences between written and spoken language and the ways digital messaging has blurred these differences
• theories of child language acquisition,
• first and subsequent language acquisition, featuring
  • an extensive section on the vocal tract, phoneme production and an introduction to Phonetics and Phonology, including the IPA
  • a series of videos and transcripts that track the language acquisition of a child from 14 months to nearly three years old.
    (BooBook Education and the authors wish to express their thanks to Tori Gordon, her partner, and daughter Emmie, for this generous addition to the text.)
• activities for field work, and information about ethics in research of human subjects.

In Unit 2 students extend and apply the concepts and metalanguage introduced in Unit 1, through topics such as

• etymology, and evidence for the existence of the Proto Indo-European Language.
• changes in the English language as it transformed through Anglo- Saxon times, the arrival of the Vikings and Danelaw, the Norman Conquest, the impact of the Renaissance and the emergence Modern English.
• how factors, including the printing press, dictionaries, the King James’ Bible, keyboards, digital communication and the internet, led to changes in English
• frameworks and overing-arching questions for the elective options in Unit 1, Area of study 1
• the impact of trade and colonisation on language: the emergence of pidgins, creoles, and national and regional varieties of English.
• notions about and uses for Standard English
• lingua franca: the need for mutual intelligibility vs language as an expression of identity and culture
• language loss and language reclamation in the Australian context
• attitudes to language change: prescriptivism and correctness in contrast to descriptivism and appropriateness.

ISBN: 978-0-6452433-0-7

$49.95 ex GST, plus postage and handling.