2017 HIGHER SCHOOL CERTIFICATE EXAMINATION

English (ESL) Paper 1 — Language Study

within an Area of Study

General Instructions

• Reading time – 10 minutes • Working time – 11

2 hours • Write using black pen

Total marks: 45

Section I – 25 marks (pages 2–6) • Attempt Question 1 • Allow about 50 minutes for this section

Section II – 20 marks (pages 7–9) • Attempt Question 2 • Allow about 40 minutes for this section

2050

Section I

25 marks Attempt Question 1 Allow about 50 minutes for this section

Examine Texts 1, 2, 3 and 4 carefully and then answer the questions in the Paper 1 Answer Booklet.

Your answers will be assessed on how well you:

demonstrate understanding of the ways language shapes and expresses perceptions

Text 1 — Film poster

Cyber-Seniors, a film directed by Saffron Cassaday, is a heartwarming and at times humorous documentary about the extraordinary journey of a group of senior citizens who take their first steps into cyber-space under the guidance of a group of teenage mentors.

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Reproduced with the kind permission of Cyber-Seniors: Connecting Generations Inc. www.cyberseniors.org

Text 2 — Poem

MARGARET ATWOOD

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This material cannot be displayed,due to copyright issues.

Text 3 — Extract from an anthology

Preface

A good poem is a contribution to reality. The world is never the same once a good poem has been added to it. A good poem helps to change the shape and significance of the universe, helps to extend everyone’s knowledge of himself and the world around him. — Dylan Thomas (1913–1953)

From an early age, my mother would gather me and my brothers after school for ‘workshops’ in music, visual art and writing. I grew to love the poems of Shakespeare, Dylan Thomas, Rumi, Yeats and others that she read to us. She read her own compositions, as well, and taught us to write our own. For me poetry allowed word to be given to the things that otherwise had no voice, and I discovered the strength and soul of poetry—through it we come to know; we are led to feel, sense and to expand our understanding beyond words.

Long before I wrote my first song, words formed as poems in my journals; and poetry drives my song writing today.

I’ve learned that not all poetry lends itself to music—some thoughts need to be sung only against the silence. There are softer and less tangible parts of ourselves that are so essential to openheartedness, to peace, to unfolding the vision and the spiritual realm of our lives, to exposing our souls. Poetry is a passage into those parts of our being where we understand who we have been and where we discover and decide who and what we will be. It makes us intimate with ourselves and others and with the human experience.

Poetry is the most honest and immediate art form that I have found, it is raw and unfiltered. It is a vital, creative expression and deserves to find greater forums, to be more highly valued, understood, and utilised in our culture and in our lives. There is such wonderful poetry in the world that wants to be given voice. My hope is to help inspire an appreciation and expression of that voice.

JEWEL (singer/songwriter) Adapted from A Night Without Armour

Reproduced with permission of HarperCollins,under section 107 “Fair Use” of the Copyright Act

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Text 4 — Nonfiction extract

Revelations* in the Dark

I am standing on a rock in the middle of a river. Nighttime in the jungle pours around me. Instinctively, I reach up and turn off my headlamp. The blackness is complete now and I pause, waiting. I had missed the darkness. I breathe in. The air is thick and abnormally hot, even for the Amazon. As my eyes adjust to the dark, the outline of the jungle slowly distinguishes itself from the night: blacks, grays, dark blues, even silvery whites. It’s amazing what we miss when the lights are on. The moon is hardly a sliver, and innumerable stars dominate the sky above, illuminating the vast jungle and bathing each leaf and rock with their soft light. All around me, vapors rise like ghosts in the starlight. Some are thin streams of mist; others are clouds so large that their billowing appears to be in slow motion.

I lie down on the rock and am still, watching the steam rise into the night. When a cool breeze blows, the mists thicken and roll, forming pale gray-blue eddies against the sky. The rock beneath my body glows dimly white in the faint light. Where my back and legs touch the rock’s surface, I’m sweating lightly. A torrent of water, hot enough to kill me, wider than a two-lane road, surges past my rock, emitting a roar that drowns out the jungle’s nighttime chorus. My senses are sharp and every movement is keenly deliberate.

I’m in the heart of the Peruvian Amazon. The other members of my team are in bed in the tiny community nearby, but there is no way I can sleep—not with what is before me here. My heart is beating hard, but I feel a complete calm. My eyes follow the river’s vapors as they rise and melt into the firmament. The Milky Way flows across the sky like a reflection of the river below. The Inca referred to the Milky Way as the Celestial River, a path to another world, a place inhabited by spirits. So the vapors join two great rivers here. It’s clear why the people who lived here regard this jungle as a place of such spiritual power. The shaman’s** words echo in my head: “The river shows us what we need to see.”

This is becoming one of the greatest adventures of my life. This will be the story I tell my children and grandchildren—and every action I make in this moment adds a new piece of the story. Every passing second now seems to hold a greater significance. Burning-hot water splashes on my right arm. I sit up, pulling my arm to my chest, no longer lost in thought. I recall my professor’s words from volcanology field school: “The people who die on volcanoes are the inexperienced who are ignorant of the dangers and the experts who have forgotten they are dangerous.”

I stand, make sure I have a firm footing, and jump back onto the nearest shore. As I look back at the Boiling River I can’t suppress an excited whisper: “This

Text 4 continues on page 5

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Text 4 (continued)

place exists. This place actually exists.” I remember the shaman saying the river has called me here for a purpose, and I can feel a greater mission about to take place. I won’t get much sleep tonight.

The vapors dance in the starlight as I make my way back to my hut, my mind filled with thoughts of the river, the dark jungle surrounding it, and the story that remains to be written. It’s a story that began with a legend heard in childhood—a story of exploration and discovery, driven by a need to understand what initially appeared unbelievable. It’s a story where modern science and traditional worldviews collide—not violently but respectfully—united in their sense of awe for the natural world.

At a time when everything seems mapped, measured, and understood, this river challenges what we think we know. It has forced me to question the line between known and unknown, ancient and modern, scientific and spiritual. It is a reminder that there are still great wonders to be discovered. We find them not just in the black void of the unknown but in the white noise of everyday life—in the things we barely notice, the things we almost forget, even in a detail of a story.

ANDRÉS UZO

from The Boiling River

Reproduced with permission from Simon & Schuster UK

R

* revelation the act of making known

** shaman a medicine man and priest who works with the supernatural

End of Question 1

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Section II

20 marks Attempt Question 2 Allow about 40 minutes for this section

Answer the question in the Paper 1 Answer Booklet. Extra writing booklets are available.

Your answer will be assessed on how well you: ● demonstrate understanding of the ways language shapes and expresses perceptions ● organise, develop and express ideas using language appropriate to audience, purpose

and context

Question 2 (20 marks)

Discoveries have the power to transform.

To what extent is this view presented in the texts you have studied?

In your response, refer to your TWO prescribed texts and ONE text of your own choosing.

The prescribed texts are:

• Prose Fiction – Allan Baillie, The China Coin

or

– Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

or

– Jhumpa Lahiri, The Namesake

or

– Tara June Winch, Swallow the Air

• Drama – Jane Harrison, Rainbow’s End from Vivienne Cleven et al., Contemporary Indigenous Plays

or

– Katherine Thomson, Navigating

Question 2 continues on page 8

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Question 2 (continued)

• Poetry – Robert Frost, The Poetry of Robert Frost

The prescribed poems are:

* The Tuft of Flowers * Mending Wall * Home Burial * After Apple-Picking * The Road Not Taken * Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening * A Boundless Moment

or

– Oodgeroo Noonuccal, My People

The prescribed poems are:

* Last of His Tribe * Acacia Ridge * Municipal Gum * Son of Mine * Understand, Old One * We Are Going * The Past

or

– Ken Watson (ed.), The Round Earth’s Imagined Corners

The prescribed poems are:

* Sujata Bhatt, The Stare * Nina Cassian, Evolution * Carol Ann Duffy, Originally * Miroslav Holub, Brief Reflection on Accuracy * Miroslav Holub, Brief Reflection on Test-Tubes * Gwyneth Lewis, The Reference Library

Question 2 continues on page 9

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Question 2 (continued)

• Nonfiction – Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara, The Motorcycle Diaries

or

– Alice Pung, Unpolished Gem

• Film – Stephen Daldry, Billy Elliot

or

– Stanley Kubrick, 2001: A Space Odyssey

Or

• Media – Ivan O’Mahoney

* Go Back to Where You Came From – Series 1: Episodes 1, 2 and 3

and

* The Response

or

– Orson Welles, War of the Worlds

End of paper

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© 2017 NSW Education Standards Authority