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Module A: Experience Through Language

This module explores how our perceptions and relationships with others are shaped in written, spoken and visual language.

Elective 1: Distinctive Voices

Students consider the types and functions of voices in texts, investigating how varied language affects interpretation and shapes meaning.

Students will choose one of the following texts as the basis for their further exploration of the elective, Distinctive Voices.

Prose Fiction:

  • Day, Marele: The Life and Crimes of Harry Lavender

Drama:

  • Shaw, George Bernard: Pygmalion

Poetry:

  • Burns, Joanne: On a Clear Day
    • On a Clear Day
    • Public Places
    • Echo
    • Australia
    • Kindling
  • Paterson, A B: The Penguin Banjo Paterson Collected Verse
    • A Bush Christening
    • Clancy of the Overflow
    • Mulga Bill’s Bicycle
    • Saltbush Bill
    • In The Defence of the Bush
    • Old Pardon, the Son of Reprieve

      • Seachange

Non-Fiction: (Speeches can be found here)

  • King, Martin Luther: I Have a Dream
  • Cullis-Suzuki, Severn: Address to the Plenary Session at the Earth Summit Rio Centro, Brazil
  • Kennedy, John F: Inaugural Address
  • Street, Jessie: Is it to be Back to the Kitchen?
  • Spencer, Earl: Eulogy for Princess Diana
  • Gandhi, Indira: True Liberation of Women

Elective 2: Distinctively Visual

Reflects on how forms and language of texts show, or assist us to visualise, images. Visual media is particularly evocative; this elective explores the effect of the visual on the responder.

Prose Fiction:

  • Lawson, Henry: The Penguin Henry Lawson Short Stories
    • The Drover’s Wife
    • In a Dry Season
    • The Loaded Dog
    • Joe Wilson’s Courtship
  • Goldsworthy, Peter: Maestro

Drama:

  • Misto, John: The Shoe-horn Sonata

Poetry:

  • Stewart, Douglas: Selected Poems
    • Lady Feeding the Cats
    • Wombat
    • The Snow-Gum
    • Nesting Time
    • The Moths
    • The Fireflies
    • Waterlily
    • Cave Painting

Film or Media:

  • Tykwer, Tom: Run Lola Run
  • Cox, Deb: Seachange
    • Playing With Fire
    • Not Such Great Expectations
    • Manna From Heaven
    • Law and Order

Module B: Close Study of Text

This module asks students to analyse how an author’s judicious and deliberate choice of language, writing conventions and ideas provoke an emotional response from the audience. They must be able to effectively write a variety of text types on their prescribed and chosen texts. Their analysis of their two supplementary texts must be integrated with their prescribed text in order to maximise their marks.

Prose Fiction:

  • Haddon, Mark: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time
  • Yolen, Jane: Briar Rose
  • Malouf, David: Fly Away Peter

Drama

  • Nowra, Louis: Cosi
  • Shakespeare, William: The Merchant of Venice

Poetry

  • Owen, Wilfred: War Poems and Others
    • The Parable of the Old Man and the Young
    • Anthem for Doomed Youth
    • Dulce Et Decorum Est Pro Patria Mori
    • Futulity
    • Disabled
    • Mental Cases
  • AWright, Judith: Collected Poems 1942-1945
    • South of my Days
    • Train Journey
    • Flame Tree in a Quarry
    • For Precision
    • Request for a Year
    • Platypus

Non-Fiction or Film

  • Krakauer, Jon: Into the Wild
  • Weir, Peter: Witness

Module C: Texts and Society

This module requires students to explore and analyse texts used in a specific situation. It assists students’ understanding of the ways that texts communicate information, ideas, bodies of knowledge, attitudes and belief systems in ways particular to specific areas of society.

Elective 1: Texts and Society

This elective looks at communities and the individual in a global context. Through examining the positive and negative aspects of the global village, students investigate changing attitudes, values and beliefs. The global village has impacted the way in which individuals communicate, engage and interact with one another, as explored through varied uses of media and technology.

Prose Fiction

  • Koch, Christopher: The Year of Living Dangerously

Drama

  • Enright, Nick

Film or Multimedia

Elective 2: Into the World

This elective explores aspects of growing up and life transitions into new worlds. Students study texts that illustrate varied pathways to personal experience, allowing for growth and changing identity.

Prose Fiction

  • Burke, J C: The Story of Tom Brennan

Drama

  • Russell, Willy: Educating Rita

Poetry

  • Blake, William: Songs of Innocence and Experience
    • The Echoing Green
    • The Lamb
    • The Chimney Sweeper
    • The Sick Rose
    • The Tyger
    • London
  • Watson, Ken: At the Round Earth’s Imagined Corners
  • As a group
    • Bhatt, Sujata: The One Who Goes Away
    • Duffy, Carol Ann: Head of English
    • Mudrooroo, Nyoongah: The Ultimate Demonstration
    • Pilinszky, Janos: The French Prisoner
    • Holub, Miroslav: Brief Reflection on Test-Tubes
    • Rozenicz, Tadeusz: The Survivor

Non-Fiction or Film

  • Pung, Alice: Unpolished Gem
  • Stephen, Daldry: Billy Elliot