introduction · web viewa life, one life, yours, you forgot about mine. let me rephrase for you, i...

ATAR ENGLISHStudy Package

St Stephen’s School Carramar – English Learning Area

INTRODUCTION

Studying for English is essential and achievable.

But, there are no quick fix methods for passing your English exam; to write well you must write often; to read well, you must read regularly.

Equally, to think critically, you must engage with and consider—in deep, broad and challenging ways—the issues and ideas of your immediate and distant world.

Over the coming weeks, prior to the exams, it is expected that you will complete many of the activities outlined in this booklet and given to you in preparation for these exams.

This study does not guarantee success. But, without it, your best is certainly not possible.

Work hard.

COMPREHENSION

In this section there are thirty texts; they are either non-fiction or fiction, written and visual.

Each excerpt is associated with one comprehension question. So, for thirty texts, there are thirty questions, one per text.

These texts represent a range from the recommended text list for ATAR English, as well as others which will stimulate thinking and provide for you a wealth of ideas from which to draw. However, questions are grouped into groups of three, as per the comprehension section of the ATAR exam.

You should do three comprehension questions (or one group) per one-hour practice session. This means that there is twenty minutes for each question, during which you must read, analyse, plan, write and edit your piece.

That is, three comprehension pieces should be written in a 60-minute, timed, exam-styled slot.

Each question will require you to refer to specific conventions, devices, techniques or elements in the text. You must know what these are and use the metalanguage used to describe them.

Having finished the comprehension questions, you can go back through them and practise different questions with different excerpts.

Your response should demonstrate your comprehension skill, and your structure and expression.

A marking key for peer-marking is provided for you at the back of this booklet.

The excerpts and questions begin on the next page.

St Stephen’s School Carramar © 2017

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Excerpts and Questions

The following questions apply to Texts One, Two and Three:

1. Explain how visual conventions in Text One persuade people to act.2. Examine how the narrator’s language in Text Two represents her

mood.3. Compare how point of view in Text Two and Text Three positons

the reader to respond.

Text One

The following image if from Unicef’s One Shot is Enough advertising campaign released in 2015.


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Text Two

The following is an excerpt from a speech made to Brock Allen Turner. It is delivered by his unnamed victim as a Victim Impact Statement. Turner was convicted on three counts of sexual assault in early 2016.

A life, one life, yours, you forgot about mine. Let me rephrase for you, I want to show people that one night of drinking can ruin two lives. You and me. You are the cause, I am the effect. You have dragged me through this hell with you, dipped me back into that night again and again. You knocked down both our towers, I collapsed at the same time you did. If you think I was spared, came out unscathed, that today I ride off into sunset, while you suffer the greatest blow, you are mistaken. Nobody wins. We have all been devastated, we have all been trying to find some meaning in all of this suffering. Your damage was concrete; stripped of titles, degrees, enrollment. My damage was internal, unseen, I carry it with me. You took away my worth, my privacy, my energy, my time, my safety, my intimacy, my confidence, my own voice, until today.

See one thing we have in common is that we were both unable to get up in the morning. I am no stranger to suffering. You made me a victim. In newspapers my name was “unconscious intoxicated woman”, ten syllables, and nothing more than that. For a while, I believed that that was all I was. I had to force myself to relearn my real name, my identity. To relearn that this is not all that I am. That I am not just a drunk victim at a frat party found behind a dumpster, while you are the All American swimmer at a top university, innocent until proven guilty, with so much at stake. I am a human being who has been irreversibly hurt, my life was put on hold for over a year, waiting to figure out if I was worth something.

Text Three

The following is an excerpt from Yann Martel’s novel Life of Pi, a fantasy adventure novel.


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The ship sank. It made a sound like a monstrous metallic burp. Things bubbled at the surface and then vanished. Everything was screaming: the sea, the wind, my heart. From the lifeboat I saw something in the water.I cried, "Richard Parker, is that you? It's so hard to see. Oh, that this rain would stop! Richard Parker? Richard Parker? Yes, it is you!"

I could see his head. He was struggling to stay at the surface of the water.

"Jesus, Mary, Muhammad and Vishnu, how good to see you, Richard Parker! Don't give up, please. Come to the lifeboat. Do you hear this whistle? TREEEEEE! TREEEEEE! TREEEEEE! You heard right. Swim, swim! You're a strong swimmer. It's not a hundred feet."

He had seen me. He looked panic-stricken. He started swimming my way. The water about him was shifting wildly. He looked small and helpless.

"Richard Parker, can you believe what has happened to us? Tell me it's a bad dream. Tell me it's not real. Tell me I'm still in my bunk on the ship and I'm tossing and turning and soon I'll wake up from this nightmare. Tell me I'm still happy. Mother, my tender guardian angel of wisdom, where are you? And you, Father, my loving worrywart? And you, Ravi, dazzling hero of my childhood? Vishnu preserve me, Allah protect me, Christ save me, I can't bear it! TREEEEEE! TREEEEEE! TREEEEEE!"

I was not wounded in any part of my body, but I had never experienced such intense pain, such a ripping of the nerves, such an ache of the heart.

He would not make it. He would drown. He was hardly moving forward and his movements were weak. His nose and mouth kept dipping underwater. Only his eyes were steadily on me.

The following questions apply to Texts Four, Five and Six:

4. Identify three visual elements in Text Four and explain how they provide an alternative representation of gender.

5. Explain how language features in Text Five create a particular representation of the waiters.


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6. Identify three language features and how they work together to create a unique view of existence.

Text Four

The following image in an advertisement, from the Oregon Centre for Nursing.

Text Five

The following is an extract from Ernest Hemingway’s short story, A Clean, Well-Lighted Place. The short story, set late at night, is about an old man who is the sole patron in a cafe; nearby the two waiters, one young, the other older, talk about him.


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It was very late and everyone had left the cafe except an old man who sat in the shadow the leaves of the tree made against the electric light. In the day time the street was dusty, but at night the dew settled the dust and the old man liked to sit late because he was deaf and now at night it was quiet and he felt the difference. The two waiters inside the cafe knew that the old man was a little drunk, and while he was a good client they knew that if he became too drunk he would leave without paying, so they kept watch on him.

"Last week he tried to commit suicide," one waiter said.

"Why?"

"He was in despair."

"What about?"

"Nothing."

"How do you know it was nothing?"

"He has plenty of money."

They sat together at a table that was close against the wall near the door of the cafe and looked at the terrace where the tables were all empty except where the old man sat in the shadow of the leaves of the tree that moved slightly in the wind. A girl and a soldier went by in the street. The street light shone on the brass number on his collar. The girl wore no head covering and hurried beside him.

"The guard will pick him up," one waiter said.

"What does it matter if he gets what he's after?"

"He had better get off the street now. The guard will get him. They went by five minutes ago."

The old man sitting in the shadow rapped on his saucer with his glass. The younger waiter went over to him.


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"What do you want?"

The old man looked at him. "Another brandy," he said.

"You'll be drunk," the waiter said. The old man looked at him. The waiter went away.

"He'll stay all night," he said to his colleague. "I'm sleepy now. I never get into bed before three o'clock. He should have killed himself last week."

The waiter took the brandy bottle and another saucer from the counter inside the cafe and marched out to the old man's table. He put down the saucer and poured the glass full of brandy.

Text Six

The following extract is from Bill Bryson’s 2003 non-fiction text, A Short History of Nearly Everything.

Welcome. And congratulations. I am delighted that you could make it. Getting here wasn't easy, I know. In fact, I suspect it was a little tougher than you realize.

To begin with, for you to be here now trillions of drifting atoms had somehow to assemble in an intricate and intriguingly obliging manner to create you. It's an arrangement so specialized and particular that it has never been tried before and will only exist this once. For the next many years (we hope) these tiny particles will uncomplainingly engage in all the billions of deft, cooperative efforts necessary to keep you intact and let you experience the supremely agreeable but generally underappreciated state known as existence.

Why atoms take this trouble is a bit of a puzzle. Being you is not a gratifying experience at the atomic level. For all their devoted attention, your atoms don't actually care about you- indeed, don't even know that you are there. They don't even know that they are there. They are mindless particles, after all, and not even themselves alive. (It is a slightly arresting notion that if you were to pick yourself apart with tweezers, one atom at a time, you would


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produce a mound of fine atomic dust, none of which had ever been alive but all of which had once been you.) Yet somehow for the period of your existence they will answer to a single overarching impulse: to keep you you.

The bad news is that atoms are fickle and their time of devotion is fleeting-fleeting indeed. Even a long human life adds up to only about 650,000 hours. And when that modest milestone flashes past, or at some other point thereabouts, for reasons unknown your atoms will shut you down, silently disassemble, and go off to be other things. And that's it for you.

The following questions apply to Texts Seven, Eight and Nine:

7. Explain how Text Seven persuades viewers to consider the reality behind travel photography.

8. Discuss how the author of Text Eight convinces the reader to agree with his opinion.

9. Identify how Text Nine uses language to construct a particular vision of Australia.

Text Seven is on the next page


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Text Seven

The following is an advertisement from the 2015 Broken India campaign, which seeks to debunk the apparent beauty of travel photography on Instagram.

Text Eight

The following is an extract from the 2014 feature article, “What do these blacks want?” published in The Stringer Independent News and written by Gerry Georgatos.

The veils and layers of racism are many. The White Australia Policy still thrives, veiled and layered. The racism I was born into manages a hefty say to this very day even if its ugliest forms are supposedly not as pronounced as they once were. Much of the overt racism that was the norm of my childhood is no longer acceptable but the racism etched in so many still does its dirty business. That racism, well hidden, steers its hosts through society and in


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their interactions. Racism does not just disappear because of a set of laws. If the racism rests in the recesses of the mind then it does its outwardly damage. Exposing racism is difficult when people just do the racism rather than speak the racism.Silencing racism does not extinguish racism, in fact it enables racism.

I often wish that racists would be let speak, so we know where we stand. So we can have a shot at being able to do something about it.

I do not need anyone who has never experienced racism to tell me about racism, nor do I appreciate anyone speaking to what racism is if they have never felt it, known it, been hurt by it, been held back by it, lost years to it. No-one who is without the raw end of racism should speak to what racism is, other than to be reviled by it and to stand against it. All of us can stand against racism, solid-in-our-thinking, and walk the ways forward, live the ways forward, but not every one of us can speak to what often there are no words for. Someone who has never lived racism does not know what words to look for in order to describe racism. There are some experiences that only those who have endured them and who have reflected upon them can speak to. Imagine the deepest well, and then imagine a haunting precipice to the darkness, as if an abyss of darkness, and imagine then you cannot imagine further. That which you cannot imagine is not known to you. Even the best academics cannot find the words.

Text Nine

The following extract is from Tim Winton’s Australian novel Cloudstreet.

Rose Pickles knew something bad was going to happen. Something really bad, this time. She itched in her awful woollen bathing suit and watched her brothers and a whole mob of other kids chucking bombies off the end of the jetty in the bronze evening light. Fishing boats were coming in along the breakwater for the night, their diesels throbbing like blood. Back under the Norfolk pines gulls bickered on the grass and fought for the scraps of uneaten lunches that schoolkids had thrown there. The sun was in the sea. She stood up and called.

Ted! Chub! Cam, it's late!


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Ted, who was a year older than her, pretended not to hear, and he came up the ladder dripping, pigeontoed, and dived off again, holding one knee, hitting the water so that he made an artillery report – ker-thump – and a great gout of water rose up at her feet.

She got up and left them there. They can do what they like, she thought. Rose was a slender, brown girl, with dark straight hair, cut hard across her forehead. She was a pretty kid, but not as pretty as her mother. Well, that's what everyone told her. She wasn't vain, but it stuck in her guts, having someone telling you that every day of your life. Probably in a minute or two, when she got home, someone'd tell her again, someone in the public bar or the Ladies' Lounge. They'd be all swilling for closing time and there'd be a great roar of talk, and she'd try to slip upstairs without getting caught up. She wasn't in the mood for it this evening. Yeah, something terrible was up. Not the war, not school, but something to do with her. She didn't know if she could bear any more bad luck. In one year they'd lost the house, the old man had been through two jobs and all the savings, and now they were living in Uncle Joel's pub.

Rose had never felt a shadow like this before, but she'd heard the old boy go on about it often enough. Well, she wondered, I bet he's squirmin out there now, out on the islands, feelin this dark luck comin on. She stopped under the trees and looked back out over Champion Bay. The boys were silhouettes now. She still heard their laughter. The sea was turning black. Yeah, he'd be squirmin. And if he wasn't, he should be.

The following questions apply to Texts Ten, Eleven and Twelve:

10. Explain how Text Ten challenges particular views on those who seek asylum in Australia.

11. Compare how Text Ten and Text Eleven effectively convince their audience about the need to accept refugees and asylum seekers.

12. Identify how Text Twelve represents Donald Trump as undermining the Presidential elections in America.


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Text Ten

The following is a print advertising campaign for refugee advocacy group The Asylum Seeker Resource Centre (ASRC).

Text Eleven

The following is an excerpt from an opinionative essay titled “Oh, Jesus. Give me strength” written in 2011.


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For some time now, especially in Western Australia, refugees arriving by boat have been targeted by political parties as a cheap and easy way to score votes. The scaremongering that has fuelled incredibly negative stereotypes of these broken people, people represented as diseased, greedy, dangerous queue jumpers, is not only outrageous, it is completely misplaced, ignorant and cruel. This is the point that Patrick O’Leary draws on in his article “Lessons of the Sea are Lessons for All”, an article that captures the sheer despair, anguish and fragility of people who flee their countries, as a last resort, in hope of salvation on the shores of a country rich in, well, everything.

As a member of this country, a land which “abounds in nature’s gifts of beauty rich and rare” I struggle to see how we can turn people away who are in their hour of most desperate need. O’Leary’s anecdotal reflections tap into this disbelief by creating a picture of people frantically clinging to life, willing to sacrifice everything for the benefit of their families and their future: “and as one woman died, out there in the freezing waves 16m from the ship, in the final seconds of her life she rolled into a mushroom float position and put her baby on her back and then held it there with her dead, blue hands.” The sheer horror of this imagery haunts me and, while I admire this woman’s final act of heroism, I struggle to comprehend what lies ahead for that small child balanced precariously on the back of her dead mother in a “boiling” and “splintered” sea. How is it, I ask, if we deny this lonely, broken child entry into our land, that we can stand proudly as a country “renowned of all the lands”? Renowned for what? O’Leary’s representation of this child is confronting because it not only asks me to act on my compassion and generosity, but because it brings into question the very ideals upon which this country is founded. If we really are to advance Australia Fair, then we need to stop cold-hearted, cheap vote-scoring attitudes towards those most in need and act with “hearts and hands . . . for those who've come across the seas” . . . for this little child who so urgently needs our care, who needs us to see her.


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Test Twelve

The following is an extract from a feature article titled “How America made Donald Trump Unstoppable”, published in the February edition of Rolling Stone Magazine.

President Donald Trump.

A thousand ridiculous accidents needed to happen in the unlikeliest of sequences for it to be possible, but absent a dramatic turn of events – an early primary catastrophe, Mike Bloomberg ego-crashing the race, etc. – this boorish, monosyllabic TV tyrant with the attention span of an Xbox-playing 11-year-old really is set to lay waste to the most impenetrable oligarchy the Western world ever devised.

It turns out we let our electoral process devolve into something so fake and dysfunctional that any half-bright con man with the stones to try it could walk right through the front door and tear it to shreds on the first go.And Trump is no half-bright con man, either. He's way better than average.It's been well-documented that Trump surged last summer when he openly embraced the ugly race politics that, according to the Beltway custom of 50-plus years, is supposed to stay at the dog-whistle level. No doubt, that's been a huge factor in his rise. But racism isn't the only ugly thing he's dragged out into the open.

Trump is no intellectual. He's not bringing Middlemarch to the toilet. If he had to jail with Stephen Hawking for a year, he wouldn't learn a thing about physics. Hawking would come out on Day 365 talking about models and football.

But, in an insane twist of fate, this bloated billionaire scion has hobbies that have given him insight into the presidential electoral process. He likes women, which got him into beauty pageants. And he likes being famous, which got him into reality TV. He knows show business.That put him in position to understand that the presidential election campaign is really just a badly acted, billion-dollar TV show whose production costs ludicrously include the political disenfranchisement of its


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audience. Trump is making a mockery of the show. How dare he demean the presidency with his antics?

The following questions apply to Texts Thirteen, Fourteen and Fifteen:

13. Identify three language techniques in Text Thirteen and explain how they capture the experience of soldiers walking the Kokoda Track.

14. Explain how Text Fourteen constructs an atmosphere of celebration.

15. Discuss how visual conventions in Text Fifteen represent climate change as an urgent matter.

Text Thirteen

The following in an extract from Peter Fitzsimons 2004 expository book Kokoda, which explores the role of Australian soldiers in the Kokoda Track campaign during WW2, 1942.

But this was just the start of nature's array of horrors. There was also the weather. The usual way of rain is that it consists of so many separate droplets. But the men discovered that New Guinea rain - which on most days started at around noon and went for hours - wasn't like that at all. There were no drops. Instead, it sort of gushed, rather like a tap turned on just above your head. Sometimes as much as 10 inches (22 centimetres) of rain fell in a single day as part of an average annual rainfall of 16 feet. Buckets of rain from the outside, buckets of sweat from the inside, and such humidity all around that none of it evaporated.

Put together it meant that clothes were permanently wet, as were the contents of your rucksack. All too often, zealously guarded cigarette papers or letters were just turned to mush, maps into goo, and remaining scraps of toilet paper into a kind of horrible puree.

How did a soldier survive in such conditions? Only just. For apart from the sheer life-sapping exhaustion of it all, the troops soon became aware that


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even the slightest medical matter - a blister, a scratch, an ulcer - quickly took a serious turn and continued on its way from there, as the body's natural defences were overwhelmed by what grander nature had in store for all who ventured into the jungle.

Among these conditions, still the thing the men found most soul-destroying of all was the false crests. Often, after labouring for hours to get to the top of a ridge that steepened as it rose, they would begin to see the hoped-for lightening in the jungle foliage ahead, maybe even a patch of blue sky. It was a sign that the summit might have been reached at last. Yet, all too often, another three minutes climb revealed that it was merely a spur, and the true summit remained, upward, ever upward. And then another and another, until the soldiers developed what they called "laughing legs" or "happy knees", where the leg muscles became so exhausted and spasm-ridden you couldn't stop your agonised knees from shaking even when you were standing still.Sometimes the men would throw themselves to the ground and gulp in vain for enough air to ease their tortured lungs, gasping for all the world like the stunned fish that used to be thrown up on to the wharves at Port Moresby after a Jap bombing. Moresby . . . it all seemed so far away, and a virtual Shangri-la of urban sophistication compared to the wilds they were in now.

Text Fourteen

The following is an extract from a feature article titled “Paris climate change agreement: the world’s greatest diplomatic success” published in the Guardian Newspaper, Monday 14 December 2015.

After two weeks of fraught negotiations, was something going badly wrong?

Then at 7.16pm, the French foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, returned abruptly to the stage, flanked by high-ranking UN officials. The last-minute compromises had been resolved, he said. And suddenly they were all on their feet. Fabius brought down the green-topped gavel, a symbol of UN talks, and announced that a Paris agreement had been signed. The delegates were clapping, cheering and whistling wildly, embracing and weeping. Even the normally reserved economist Lord Stern was whooping.


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Outside the hall, a “Mexican wave” of standing ovations rippled across the conference centre as news reached participants gathered around screens outside for the translation into their own language. The 50,000 people who attended the summit had been waiting for this moment, through marathon negotiating sessions and sleepless nights.

The contrast with the last global attempt to resolve climate change, at Copenhagen in 2009, which collapsed into chaos and recriminations, could not have been greater. In a city recently hit by terrorist attacks that left 130 dead and scores more critically injured, collective will had prevailed.

Text Fifteen

The following is an advertisement created by Ferdi Rizkivanto, who has made this image available for use through Creative Commons for any not-for-profit organisation to use to promote climate change.


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The following questions apply to Texts Sixteen, Seventeen and Eighteen:

16. Examine how Text Sixteen uses visual techniques to construct a strange view of the world.

17. Explain how Text Seventeen uses generic conventions to call into question the “paranoid nationalism” of current day Australia.

18. Identify the techniques used in Text Eighteen and how they capture a sense of national pride.

Text Sixteen

The following is a screen shot taken from Barbie World website in 2015.

Text Seventeen

The following article appeared in The Australian newspaper in 2015. The author, Masako Fukui, is a freelance journalist in Sydney.

Diversity breeds a stronger identity


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THIS is the first Australia Day I celebrate as an Australian, and a proud new citizen at that. And I'm pretty sure if you asked the other 100,000 or so people who, like me, pledged their allegiance to Australia in the past year, most would concur with my sentiments.

So why does a discussion of citizenship in Australia evoke such fear and divisiveness? Why is there so much uncertainty about multiculturalism on a day when we should be affirming our identity?

It seems to me that this paranoid nationalism is a reaction to some choice words emitted by one or two members of our Muslim community, yet there is little evidence that our country is about to be swamped by extremist Muslim values.

If anything, we are more likely to be swamped by British values. According to the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs' 2015-16 annual report, the largest group of people to take up Australian citizenship in that period were British, at more than 20,000. The second largest group were Chinese, at about 10,000. The department's figures do not indicate religious affiliation or the values espoused by these new citizens, but as they came from about 180 different nations, there are bound to be divergent sets of beliefs represented.

Should differing values necessarily lead to multicultural doubts? Do they diminish our national identity and sense of cohesion? Quite the opposite, in my view.

I am Japanese, so the symbolic cornerstones of Australian identity, such as Anzac Day, have a completely different meaning for me, and the Anzac story can never be part of my story in the same way that it continues to be a central organising myth for many Australians.

In fact, no matter how Australian I become, how Aussie I feel, my black hair, my dark eyes and yellow skin mean I will never be considered true blue by some in Australia.

But that doesn't make my identity less Australian.


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Text Eighteen

The following is a speech given by former Prime Minister, Paul Keating, at the Funeral Service of the Unknown Australian Soldier, Canberra, 11 November 1993.

We do not know this Australian's name and we never will. We do not know his rank or his battalion. We do not know where he was born, or precisely how and when he died. We do not know where in Australia he had made his home or when he left it for the battlefields of Europe. We do not know his age or his circumstances - whether he was from the city or the bush; what occupation he left to become a soldier; what religion, if he had a religion; if he was married or single. We do not know who loved him or whom he loved. If he had children we do not know who they are. His family is lost to us as he was lost to them. We will never know who this Australian was.

Yet he has always been among those we have honoured. We know that he was one of the 45,000 Australians who died on the Western Front. One of the 416,000 Australians who volunteered for service in the First World War. One of the 324,000 Australians who served overseas in that war, and one of the 60,000 Australians who died on foreign soil. One of the 100,000 Australians who have died in wars this century.

He is all of them. And he is one of us.

The following questions apply to Texts Nineteen, Twenty and Twenty-One:

19. Examine how language features in Text Nineteen characterises Luca Brasi.

20. Compare how language features in Text Nineteen and Text Twenty represent masculinity.

21. Identify how three visual elements combine in Text Twenty-One to portray gamers.


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Text Nineteen

The following is an extract from Mario Puzo’s novel, The Godfather.

Luca Brasi was indeed a man to frighten the devil in hell himself. Short, squat, massive-skulled, his presence sent out alarm bells of danger. His face was stamped into a mask of fury. The eyes were brown but with none of the warmth of that color, more a deadly tan. The mouth was not so much cruel as lifeless; thin, rubbery and the color of veal.

Brasi’s reputation for violence was awesome and his devotion to Don Corleone legendary. He was, in himself, one of the great blocks that supported the Don’s power structure. His kind was a rarity. Luca Brasi did not fear the police, he did not fear society, he did not fear God, he did not fear hell, he did not fear or love his fellow man. But he had elected, he had chosen, to fear and love Don Corleone. Ushered into the presence of the Don, the terrible Brasi held himself stiff with respect. He stuttered over the flowery congratulations he offered and his formal hope that the first grandchild would be masculine. He then handed the Don an envelope stuffed with cash as a gift for the bridal couple.

The money in the envelope was sure to be more than anyone else had given. Brasi had spent many hours deciding on the sum, comparing it to what the other guests might offer. He wanted to be the most generous to show that he had the most respect, and that was why he had given his envelope to the Don personally, a gaucherie the Don overlooked in his own flowery sentence of thanks. Hagen saw Luca Brasi’s face lose its mask of fury, swell with pride and pleasure. Brasi kissed the Don’s hand before he went out the door that Hagen held open. Hagen prudently gave Brasi a friendly smile which the squat man acknowledged with a polite stretching of rubbery, veal-colored lips…

Text Twenty is on the next page.


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Text Twenty

The following is an extract from Chinua Achebe’s 1959 novel Things Fall Apart, which is about about the tragic fall of the protagonist, Okonkwo, and the Igbo culture in Nigeria.. Okonkwo ruled his household with a heavy hand. His wives, especially the youngest, lived in perpetual fear of his fiery temper, and so did his little children. Perhaps down in his heart Okonkwo was not a cruel man. But his whole life was dominated by fear, the fear of failure and of weakness. It was deeper and more intimate than the fear of evil and capricious gods and of magic, the fear of the forest, and of the forces of nature, malevolent, red in tooth and claw. Okonkwo's fear was greater than these. It was not external but lay deep within himself. It was the fear of himself, lest he should be found to resemble his father.

Even as a little boy he had resented his father's failure and weakness, and even now he still remembered how he had suffered when a playmate had told him that his father was agbala. That was how Okonkwo first came to know that agbala was not only another name for a woman, it could also mean a man who had taken no title. And so Okonkwo was ruled by one passion - to hate everything that his father Unoka had loved. One of those things was gentleness and another was idleness. During the planting season Okonkwo worked daily on his farms from cock-crow until the chickens went to roost. He was a very strong man and rarely felt fatigue. But his wives and young children were not as strong, and so they suffered. But they dared not complain openly.

Text Twenty-One is on the next page


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Text Twenty-One

The following is an advertisement for PS2.

The following questions apply to Texts Twenty-Two, Twenty-Three and Twenty-Four:

22. Examine how Grenville uses conventions of narrative in text Twenty-Two to represent a convict arriving on Australian shores.

23. Identify generic conventions in Text Twenty-Three and how they work to offer a challenging view of contemporary Australia.

24. Examine how Text Twenty-Four convinces the audience to buy the advertised product.


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Text Twenty-Two

The following is an extract from Kate Grenville’s novel The Secret River, which follows the life of a convict and his family who are transported to Australia.

All the many months in the ship, lying in the hammock which was all the territory he could claim in the world, listening to the sea slap against the side of the ship and trying to hear the voices of his own wife, his own children, in the noise from the women’s quarters, he had been comforted by telling over the bends of his own Thames. The Isle of Dogs, the deep eddying pool of Rotherhithe, the sudden twist of the sky as the river swung around the corner to Lambeth: they were all as intimate to him as breathing. Daniel Ellison grunted in his hammock beside him, fighting even in his sleep, the women were silent beyond their bulkhead, and still in the eye of his mind he rounded bend after bend of that river.

Now, standing in the great sighing lung of this other place and feeling the dirt chill under his feet, he knew that life was gone. He might as well have swung at the end of the rope they had measured for him. This was a place, like death, from which men did not return. It was a sharp stab like a splinter under a nail: the pain of loss. He would die here under these alien stars, his bones rot in this cold earth.

He had not cried, not for thirty years, not since he was a hungry child too young to know that crying did not fill your belly. But now his throat was thickening, a press of despair behind his eyes forcing warm tears down his cheeks.

There were things worse than dying: life had taught him that. Being here in New South Wales might be one of them.

Text Twenty-Three

The following is from an editorial titled Australia’s Day for Secrets, Flags and Cowards, published on his website in 2016.


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On Australia Day 2016 – Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people prefer Invasion Day or Survival Day – there will be no acknowledgement that Australia’s uniqueness is its first people, along with an ingrained colonial mentality that ought to be an abiding embarrassment in an independent nation. This mentality is expressed in a variety of ways, from unrelenting political grovelling at the knee of a rapacious United States to an almost casual contempt for Indigenous Australians, an echo of “kaffir”-abusing South Africans.

Apartheid runs through Australian society. Within a short flight from Sydney, Aboriginal people live the shortest of lives. Men are often dead before they reach 45. They die from Dickensian diseases, such as rheumatic heart disease. Children go blind from trachoma, and deaf from otitis media, diseases of poverty. A doctor told me, “I wanted to give a patient an anti-inflammatory for an infection that would have been preventable if living conditions were better, but I couldn’t treat her because she didn’t have enough food to eat and couldn’t ingest the tablets. I feel sometimes as if I’m dealing with similar conditions as the English working class of the beginning of the industrial revolution.”

The racism that allows this in one of the most privileged societies on earth runs deep. In the 1920s, a “Protector of Aborigines” oversaw the theft of mixed race children with the justification of “breeding out the colour”. Today, record numbers of Indigenous children are removed from their homes and many never see their families again. On 11 February, an inspiring group called Grandmothers Against Removals will lead a march on Federal Parliament in Canberra, demanding the return of the stolen children.

Text Twenty-Four commences on the next page


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Text Twenty-Four

The following is a black and white reproduction of a 2016 advertisement for Science Diet dog food.

The following questions apply to Texts Twenty-Five, Twenty-Six and Twenty-Seven:

25. Examine how visual techniques in Text Twenty-Five portray homelessness.

26. Identify three narrative conventions in Text Twenty-Six and how they work to capture a sense of tranquility and remoteness.

27. Compare how Text Twenty-Six and Text Twenty-Seven create a particular atmosphere in their settings.


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Text Twenty-Five

The following is a portrait by Tatsuo Suzuki and published on the Black and White Street Photography website.

Text Twenty-Six

The following is an excerpt from Peter Temple’s The Broken Shore, the story of City Homicide Detective Joe Cashin who, still recovering from a recent scrape with death, is temporarily reassigned to his quiet coastal hometown

Cashin walked around the hill, into the wind from the sea. It was cold, late autumn, last glowing leaves clinging to the liquidambars and maples his great-grandfather’s brother had planted, their surrender close. He loved this time, the morning stillness, loved it more than spring.

The dogs were tiring now but still hunting the ground, noses down, taking more time to sniff, less hopeful. Then one picked up a scent and, new life in their legs, they loped in file for the trees, vanished.


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When he was near the house, the dogs, black as liquorice, came out of the trees, stopped, heads up, looked around as if seeing the land for the first time. Explorers. They turned their gaze on him for a while, started down the slope.

He walked the last stretch as briskly as he could and, as he put his hand out to the gate, they reached him. Their curly black heads tried to nudge him aside, insisting on entering first, strong back legs pushing. He unlatched the gate, they pushed it open enough to slip in, nose to tail, trotted down the path to the shed door. Both wanted to be first again, stood with tails up, furry scimitars, noses touching at the door jamb.

Text Twenty-Seven

The following is an excerpt from Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, a novel published in 1932 and set in distant dystopian future.

A SQUAT grey building of only thirty-four stories. Over the main entrance the words, CENTRAL LONDON HATCHERY AND CONDITIONING CENTRE, and, in a shield, the World State's motto, COMMUNITY, IDENTITY, STABILITY.The enormous room on the ground floor faced towards the north. Cold for all the summer beyond the panes, for all the tropical heat of the room itself, a harsh thin light glared through the windows, hungrily seeking some draped lay figure, some pallid shape of academic goose-flesh, but finding only the glass and nickel and bleakly shining porcelain of a laboratory. Wintriness responded to wintriness. The overalls of the workers were white, their hands gloved with a pale corpse-coloured rubber. The light was frozen, dead, a ghost. Only from the yellow barrels of the microscopes did it borrow a certain rich and living substance, lying along the polished tubes like butter, streak after luscious streak in long recession down the work tables."And this," said the Director opening the door, "is the Fertilizing Room."

Bent over their instruments, three hundred Fertilizers were plunged, as the Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning entered the room, in the scarcely breathing silence, the absent-minded, soliloquizing hum or whistle, of absorbed concentration. A troop of newly arrived students, very young, pink and callow, followed nervously, rather abjectly, at the Director's heels. Each


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of them carried a notebook, in which, whenever the great man spoke, he desperately scribbled. Straight from the horse's mouth. It was a rare privilege. The D. H. C. for Central London always made a point of personally conducting his new students round the various departments.

The following questions apply to Texts Twenty-Eight, Twenty-Nine and Thirty:

28. Examine how narrative elements in Text Twenty-Eight construct the idea of friendship.

29. Compare how narrative elements in Text Twenty-Eight and Text Twenty-Nine represent relationship.

30. Examine how Text Thirty influences the audience to act.

Text Twenty-Eight

The following in an excerpt from the novella The Little Prince, first published in France in 1943. It is an allegorical tale of loneliness, friendship, love, and loss, in the form of a young prince fallen to Earth.

It was then that the fox appeared.

"Good morning," said the fox.

"Good morning," the little prince responded politely, although when he turned around he saw nothing.

"I am right here," the voice said, "under the apple tree."

"Who are you?" asked the little prince, and added, "You are very pretty to look at."

"I am a fox," the fox said.

"Come and play with me," proposed the little prince. "I am so unhappy."

"I cannot play with you," the fox said. "I am not tamed."


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"Ah! Please excuse me," said the little prince.

But, after some thought, he added:

"What does that mean--'tame'?"

"You do not live here," said the fox. "What is it that you are looking for?"

"I am looking for men," said the little prince. "What does that mean--'tame'?"

"Men," said the fox. "They have guns, and they hunt. It is very disturbing. They also raise chickens. These are their only interests. Are you looking for chickens?"

"No," said the little prince. "I am looking for friends. What does that mean--'tame'?"

"It is an act too often neglected," said the fox. It means to establish ties."

"'To establish ties'?"

"Just that," said the fox. "To me, you are still nothing more than a little boy who is just like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you. And you, on your part, have no need of me. To you, I am nothing more than a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world . . ."

"I am beginning to understand," said the little prince. "There is a flower . . . I think that she has tamed me . . ."

"It is possible," said the fox. "On the Earth one sees all sorts of things."

"Oh, but this is not on the Earth!" said the little prince.

The fox seemed perplexed, and very curious.

"On another planet?"

"Yes."


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"Are there hunters on that planet?"

"No."

"Ah, that is interesting! Are there chickens?"

"No."

"Nothing is perfect," sighed the fox.

But he came back to his idea.

"My life is very monotonous," the fox said. "I hunt chickens; men hunt me. All the chickens are just alike, and all the men are just alike. And, in consequence, I am a little bored. But if you tame me, it will be as if the sun came to shine on my life. I shall know the sound of a step that will be different from all the others. Other steps send me hurrying back underneath the ground. Yours will call me, like music, out of my burrow. And then look: you see the grain-fields down yonder? I do not eat bread. Wheat is of no use to me. The wheat fields have nothing to say to me. And that is sad. But you have hair that is the color of gold. Think how wonderful that will be when you have tamed me! The grain, which is also golden, will bring me back the thought of you. And I shall love to listen to the wind in the wheat . . ."

The fox gazed at the little prince, for a long time.

Text Twenty-Nine

The following is an extract from Khaled Hosseini’s novel The Kite Runner, the tale of one boy’s struggle for redemption.

When we were children, Hassan and I used to climb the poplar trees in the driveway of my father’s house and annoy our neighbors by reflecting sunlight into their homes with a shard of mirror. We would sit across from each other on a pair of high branches, our naked feet dangling, our trouser pockets filled with dried mulberries and walnuts. We took turns with the mirror as we ate mulberries, pelted each other with them, giggling, laughing. I can still see Hassan up on that tree, sunlight flickering through the leaves on his almost


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perfectly round face, a face like a Chinese doll chiseled from hardwood: his flat, broad nose and slanting, narrow eyes like bamboo leaves, eyes that looked, depending on the light, gold, green, even sapphire. I can still see his tiny low-set ears and that pointed stub of a chin, a meaty appendage that looked like it was added as a mere afterthought. And the cleft lip, just left of midline, where the Chinese doll maker’s instrument may have slipped, or perhaps he had simply grown tired and careless.

Sometimes, up in those trees, I talked Hassan into firing walnuts with his slingshot at the neighbor’s one-eyed German shepherd. Hassan never wanted to, but if I asked, really asked, he wouldn’t deny me. Hassan never denied me anything. And he was deadly with his slingshot. Hassan’s father, Ali, used to catch us and get mad, or as mad as someone as gentle as Ali could ever get. He would wag his finger and wave us down from the tree. He would take the mirror and tell us what his mother had told him, that the devil shone mirrors too, shone them to distract Muslims during prayer. "And he laughs while he does it," he always added, scowling at his son.

"Yes, Father," Hassan would mumble, looking down at his feet. But he never told on me. Never told that the mirror, like shooting walnuts at the neighbor’s dog, was always my idea.

Text Thirty is on the next page.

Text Thirty


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The following is an advertisement from Amnesty International which seeks to highlight the injustice of child soldiers.

RESPONDING

There are ten questions in this section.


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You should do one question (i.e. one response) per week.

Each response should be written in a 60-minute, timed, exam-styled slot.

You should aim for approximately 900 – 1200 words per response (or 3 – 4 pages)

By the end of the ten questions you should have used all of your texts studied this year.

You do not have to write an essay, but this will be the most popular form chosen.

Your response should demonstrate your understanding of form, purpose, context and audience.

You must make primary reference to any text or text type that you have studied.

This is your opportunity to demonstrate your knowledge of texts. Quote well, quote from all sections of the text (not just the beginning and end) and quote often.

You should revise essay structure, particularly, the introduction, thesis statements, topic sentences and conclusions.

Once you have finished, for extra study, attempt each question using a different text.

Questions are on the next page

Responding Questions


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1. Debate the idea that every time we read a text we lose a piece of our innocence.

2. Contrast how two texts have challenged your perspective on particular ideas.

3. With close reference to two texts you’ve studied this year, explore the relationship between content, structure and meaning.

4. With close reference to a text you’ve studied, explore the relationship between voice and perspective.

5. Evaluate the extent to which an understanding of situational context has influenced your reading of two texts you’ve studied this year.

6. Contrast how two texts you have studied support particular values.

7. Texts from different genres can achieve the same result. Explore this idea with reference to texts you have studied this year.

8. A text written in the past will be read very differently today. Explore this idea with reference to your reading of one text.

9. Explore how the language of two texts you’ve studied transports you to other worlds.

10.Narrative arc should always return the world of the story, and therefore of the reader, to order. Debate this idea through a comparison of two or more texts you have studied.

COMPOSING


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There are ten questions in this section.

You should do a minimum of one question (i.e. one composition) per week.

Each composition should be written in a 60-minute, timed, exam-styled slot.

You should aim for approximately 900 – 1200 words per composition (or 3 – 4 pages).

By the end of the ten questions you should have written in a range of styles for a range of purposes and audiences.

It is ESSNTIAL to know first, before you write, to whom it is and for what purposes it is that you are writing.

You should write in as many different styles as possible.

Composition is a difficult skill. Once you have written a piece on one question, write another, on the same question, but from a different perspective, in a different point of view, to a different audience, from the other side of the argument.

You are required to demonstrate writing skills by choosing a form appropriate to a specific audience, context and purpose.

Voice is an essential consideration for success in this section. You should be able to answer questions of your composition such as: “The voice of the narrator is one of . . . .” or “the voices in this text represent . . . .” or “The character uses a voice of . . . .”

If you are creating a persuasive argument, you must demonstrate a complex understanding of the chosen topic. Vague arguments or arguments left unsubstantiated will not be rewarded.

Narrative pieces should respect the genre within which they are written.

The use of figurative, persuasive and emotive language techniques will often be rewarded where they are used in original and meaningful ways.

Composing Questions


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1. “A person will not remember what you said or did. They’ll remember only how you made them feel”. Use the idea inspired by this quote to develop a character in a short narrative.

2. Persuade an audience that happiness is not the key to a successful life.

3. “We do not remember days, we remember moments.” Use this quote as stimulus for a piece of writing in a form of your choosing.

4. Use the following image to explore the point of view of a central character.

5. “Netflix, I love you”. Use this quote as the opening or closing line to a piece that explores the idea of binge TV viewing.

6. “Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd.” Persuade an audience that this type of thinking has no place in today’s world.

7. Develop a story that explores the setting seen in the image below:


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8. Write a piece from the perspective of the girl in the image below:

9. Pokémon Go is making the world a better place. Create two short texts

that offer two different perspectives on this idea.


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10. Write a piece, in a form of your own choosing, that uses aspects of the image below as metaphor to represent the human experience:

MARKING RUBRICS

The following marking rubrics should be used to self-mark and peer-mark your work.

Comprehending – 10 Marks

Questions require the candidate to comprehend and analyse unseen written and visual texts and respond concisely. (Exam Brief, SCSA)

Comprehension of Text/s 7

Detailed and sophisticated analysis text/s with appropriate evidence and terminology relating to the question

5-7

Limited understanding of text/s with minimal analysis (or comparison); retell of text with limited reference to the question

1-4

Not attempted or entirely irrelevant analysis 0

Structure and Expression 3

Succinct, coherent and clear response; and few minor errors 3


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Underdeveloped expression and poorly structured response; frequent errors

1-2

Not attempted or significantly flawed 0

Responding – 40 Marks

Questions require the candidate to demonstrate analytical and critical thinking skills in relation to studied texts. (Exam Brief SCSA)

Engagement with Question 15

Integrated response addressing all components of the question supported with explicit and detailed text based evidence

11-15

Competent response addressing most components of the question supported with some appropriate text based evidence

6-10

Limited response primarily focusing on retell of the text 1-5

Response that does not address the question 0

Critical Literacy 15

Sophisticated response demonstrating interpretation, analysis, comparison, contrast and/or evaluation of the text/s in relation to the question

11-15

Competent response demonstrating some analysis, comparison or contrast of the text/s in relation to the question

6-10

Limited response demonstrating recall of the text/s 1-5

Insufficiently developed or displayed critical thinking skills 0

Structure and Expression 10

Fluently written with sophisticated vocabulary, syntax and punctuation; and few minor errors

8-10

Competently written with effective vocabulary, syntax and punctuation; some errors

6-7

Uncontrolled writing with limited vocabulary, syntax and punctuation; frequent errors

3-5


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Insufficiently developed or displayed writing skills; two or three points with little structure or development

0-2

Composing – 30 Marks

Questions require the candidate to demonstrate writing skills by choosing form(s) or writing appropriate to specific audiences, contexts and purposes. (Exam Brief SCSA)

Engagement with the Question 10

Sustained and innovative content that addresses the nuances of the question

8-10

Competent and thoughtful response that addresses the demands of the question

6-7

Limited, predictable or clichéd engagement with the question 3-5

Response that does not address the question; irrelevant but interesting content

0-2

Control of Language and Expression 10

Fluently written with sophisticated vocabulary, highly developed personal voice and flair; and few minor errors

8-10

Competently written with effective vocabulary and emerging voice; some errors

6-7

Uncontrolled writing with limited or inappropriate vocabulary and/or tone; frequent errors

3-5

Insufficiently developed or displayed writing skills; two or three points with little structure or development

0-2

Control of Generic Conventions and Form 10

Deliberate and specific manipulation of conventions of chosen form for chosen audience and purpose

8-10

Effective control of conventions of chosen form for an audience and/or purpose

6-7

Limited understanding and/or use of conventions of chosen form 3-5


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with little consideration of audience or purpose

Insufficiently developed or displayed use of conventions of chosen form

0-2


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introduction · web viewa life, one life, yours, you forgot about mine. let me rephrase for you, i...

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