The Australian Curriculum edition of the English Skills Builder series sees these best-selling skills resources fully revised to address the three English strands of Language, Literacy and Literature. Designed to complement any English program, this series will teach and reinforce the skills that students need at junior secondary level. Each workbook is divided into 50 units, and content explores different aspects of language use as well as different text types and genres.

The English Skills Builder series are now accompanied by digital obooks for the first time. The obook is a cloud-based web-book available anywhere, anytime, on any device, navigated by topic or by ‘page view’. As well as containing the student text, the obook offers additional Enriching Literature units focusing on texts relevant to the cross-curriculum priorities, as well as popular classic and contemporary texts.


For all related titles in this series, please click here

Part A Language and Literacy

Parts of speech

Unit 1 Nouns
Unit 2 Using nouns
Unit 3 Types of pronouns
Unit 4 Pronouns
Unit 5 Verbs and simple tenses
Unit 6 Perfect tenses
Unit 7 Continuous tenses
Unit 8 Active and passive voice
Unit 9 Subject-verb agreement
Unit 10 Adjectives
Unit 11 Using adjectives
Unit 12 Adverbs
Unit 13 Using adverbs
Unit 14 Prepositions
Unit 15 Conjunctions

Sentence structure

Unit 16 Phrases
Unit 17 Clauses
Unit 18 Sentence structure
Unit 19 Improving sentences
Unit 20 Fragments and run-on sentences
Unit 21 Parallel sentence structure

Punctuation

Unit 22 Overview of punctuation
Unit 23 Punctuation within a sentence
Unit 24 Dots, dashes, brackets and hyphens
Unit 25 Apostrophes: possession
Unit 26 Apostrophes: contractions
Unit 27 Quotations marks
Unit 28 Using quotations
Unit 29 Abbreviations, numbers and italics
Unit 30 Punctuation practice

Using words

Unit 31 Word stems, prefixes and suffixes
Unit 32 Euphemisms, slang, clichés, jargon and idioms
Unit 33 Using a thesaurus
Unit 34 Synonyms and antonyms
Unit 35 Confusing pairs of words
Unit 36 Spelling strategies
Unit 37 Difficult words to spell
Unit 38 Purpose, audience and context
Unit 39 Punctuation for different purposes
Unit 40 Writing paragraphs
Unit 41 Planning an essay
Unit 42 Writing an essay
Unit 43 Footnotes, endnotes and referencing
Unit 44 Editing checklist

Part B Literature

Unit 45 Reading short stories and novels
Unit 46 Reading poetry
Unit 47 Reading drama
Unit 48 Reading Shakespeare
Unit 49 Reading autobiography and biography
Unit 50 Reading persuasive texts

obook only content

Enrich Literature Units

Chenxi and the Foreigner
Avatar
The Hunger Games
Bran Nue Dae
Land’s Edge
The Rabbits
Linda Burney ‘2003 Maiden speech’
Macbeth
The Happiest Refugee
Our Choice

Mary Manning is the author and co-author of several textbooks on English, literature and poetry published by Oxford University Press.  She has coordinated the TAFE Diploma of Professional Writing and Editing at the CAE, taught English and English Literature at Firbank Grammar School and acted as a VCE examiner for both subjects. Mary is also a published writer of poetry and short fiction.

The late Margaret McKenzie taught English, Drama and History. After obtaining the Diploma of Professional Writing and Editing at Holmesglen College of TAFE, she also taught editing, the construction of English and playwriting there and at the CAE for many years. She is the author of several books on grammar and style, in addition to poetry and a number of plays.

Michael Horne is an experienced teacher of English and Literature. He is currently Head of School: 10-12 at Ave Maria College, and has previously taught at Scotch College. Michael has written a number of textbooks for Oxford University Press, and has assessed the VCE English exam. He is an experienced VATE presenter, and has spoken at English association conferences in a number of states on approaches to the Australian Curriculum.

Deb McPherson is an experienced English teacher. For over fifteen years she helped select English texts for the NSW Higher School Certificate.  When she was a Senior Curriculum Officer at the NSW Board of Studies she worked on the development of the 2002 English Years 7-10 Syllabus and helped implement that syllabus when she was Manager of English for the NSW Department of Education and Training. She is the author of four anthologies of Australian non-fiction for Oxford University Press, co-author of Oxford HSC English and the Oxford online Enriching Literature series. She has lectured in English and literacy at the universities of Newcastle and Wollongong.

Jane Sherlock has been an experienced, enthusiastic and passionate teacher of English for over 35 years. She has been involved in the new English syllabus for the Australian Curriculum, first in the draft writing stages in 2010 with the NSW Board of Studies and now as a presenter throughout NSW. Jane is also an author of a number of English textbooks including the national award- winning Oxford HSC English. Jane is a part time tutor and marker for the universities of Wollongong and Charles Sturt. In 2009 Jane received the Australian College of Educators award for her contribution to education.

Part B: Literature
The Happiest Refugee - obook Enriching Literature Unit
Bran Nue Dae - obook Enriching Literature Unit