English Advanced Modules

Common Module: Texts and Human Experiences

In this common module students deepen their understanding of how texts represent
individual and collective human experiences. They examine how texts represent human
qualities and emotions associated with, or arising from, these experiences. Students
appreciate, explore, interpret, analyse and evaluate the ways language is used to shape
these representations in a range of texts in a variety of forms, modes and media.

Students explore how texts may give insight into the anomalies, paradoxes and
inconsistencies in human behaviour and motivations, inviting the responder to see the
world differently, to challenge assumptions, ignite new ideas or reflect personally. They
may also consider the role of storytelling throughout time to express and reflect particular
lives and cultures. By responding to a range of texts they further develop skills and
confidence using various literary devices, language concepts, modes and media to
formulate a considered response to texts.

Students study one prescribed text and a range of short texts that provide rich
opportunities to further explore representations of human experiences illuminated in texts.
They make increasingly informed judgements about how aspects of these texts, for
example context, purpose, structure, stylistic and grammatical features, and form shape
meaning. In addition, students select one related text and draw from personal experience
to make connections between themselves, the world of the text and their wider world.

By responding and composing throughout the module students further develop a

repertoire of skills in comprehending, interpreting and analysing complex texts. They
examine how different modes and media use visual, verbal and/or digital language
elements. They communicate ideas using figurative language to express universal themes
and evaluative language to make informed judgements about texts. Students further
develop skills in using metalanguage, correct grammar and syntax to analyse language
and express a personal perspective about a text.
Module A: Textual Conversations
In this module, students explore the ways in which the comparative study of texts can
reveal resonances and dissonances between and within texts. Students consider the ways
that a reimagining or reframing of an aspect of a text might mirror, align or collide with the
details of another text. In their textual studies, they also explore common or disparate
issues, values, assumptions or perspectives and how these are depicted. By comparing
two texts students understand how composers (authors, poets, playwrights, directors,
designers and so on) are influenced by other texts, contexts and values, and how this
shapes meaning.

Students identify, interpret, analyse and evaluate the textual features, conventions,
contexts, values and purpose of two prescribed texts. As students engage with the texts
they consider how their understanding, appreciation and enjoyment of both texts has been
enhanced through the comparative study and how the personal, social, cultural and
historical contextual knowledge that they bring to the texts influences their perspectives
and shapes their own compositions.

By responding imaginatively, interpretively and critically students explore and evaluate

individual and common textual features, concepts and values. They further develop skills
in analysing the ways that various language concepts, for example motif, allusion and
intertextuality, connect and distinguish texts and how innovating with language concepts,
form and style can shape new meaning. They develop appropriate analytical and
evaluative language required to compose informed, cohesive responses using appropriate
terminology, grammar, syntax and structure.

By composing critical and creative texts in a range of modes and media, students develop
the confidence, skills and appreciation to express a considered personal perspective.
Module B: A Critical Study of Literature
In this module, students develop detailed analytical and critical knowledge, understanding
and appreciation of a substantial literary text. Through increasingly informed and personal
responses to the text in its entirety, students understand the distinctive qualities of the text,
notions of textual integrity and significance.

Students study one prescribed text. Central to this study is the close analysis of the text’s
construction, content and language to develop students’ own rich interpretation of the text,
basing their judgements on detailed evidence drawn from their research and reading. In
doing so, they evaluate notions of context with regard to the text’s composition and
reception; investigate and evaluate the perspectives of others; and explore the ideas in the
text, further strengthening their informed personal perspective.

Students have opportunities to appreciate and express views about the aesthetic and
imaginative aspects of the text by composing creative and critical texts of their own.
Through reading, viewing or listening they critically analyse, evaluate and comment on the
text’s specific language features and form. They express complex ideas precisely and
cohesively using appropriate register, structure and modality. They draft, appraise and
refine their own texts, applying the conventions of syntax, spelling and grammar
appropriately.

Opportunities for students to engage deeply with the text as a responder and composer
further develops personal and intellectual connections with the text, enabling them to
express their considered perspective of its value and meaning.
Module C: The Craft of Writing
In this module, students strengthen and extend their knowledge, skills and confidence as
accomplished writers. Students write for a range of audiences and purposes using
language to convey ideas and emotions with power and precision.

Students appreciate, examine and analyse at least two short prescribed texts as well as
texts from their own wide reading, as models and stimulus for the development of their
own complex ideas and written expression. They evaluate how writers use language
creatively and imaginatively for a range of purposes; to express insights, evoke emotion,
describe the wonder of the natural world, shape a perspective or to share an aesthetic
vision.

Through the study of enduring, quality texts of the past as well as recognised
contemporary works, students appreciate, analyse and evaluate the versatility, power and
aesthetics of language. Through considered appraisal and imaginative engagement with
texts, students reflect on the complex and recursive processes of writing to further develop
their self-expression and apply their knowledge of textual forms and features in their own
sustained and cohesive compositions.

During the pre-writing stage, students generate and explore various concepts through
discussion and speculation. Throughout the stages of drafting and revising students
experiment with various figurative, rhetorical and linguistic devices, for example allusion,
imagery, narrative voice, characterisation, and tone. Students consider purpose, audience
and context to deliberately shape meaning. During the editing stages students apply the
conventions of syntax, spelling, punctuation and grammar appropriately and effectively for
publication.

Students have opportunities to work independently and collaboratively to reflect, refine and
strengthen their own skills in producing highly crafted imaginative, discursive, persuasive
and informative texts.
Module Summaries
Com Mod: Texts to Human Experiences
● individual and collective human experiences
● anomalies, paradoxes and inconsistencies in human behaviour and motivations
● role of storytelling throughout time to express and reflect particular lives and
cultures

Mod A: Textual Conversations

● comparative study of texts can reveal resonances(bounce back and forth between
two states or places) and dissonances (lack of agreement or harmony between
people or things.)between and within texts
● the ways that a reimagining(reimagine or reframing of an aspect of a text might
mirror, align or collide with the details of another text
● common or disparate issues, values, assumptions or perspectives and how these
are depicted
● how composers are influenced by other texts, contexts and values, and how this
shapes meaning
● how (your) personal, social, cultural and historical contextual knowledge that (you)
bring to the texts influences (your) perspectives
○ How your 21st C context influences your positioning
● how (your) understanding, appreciation and enjoyment of both texts has been
enhanced through the comparative study

Mod B: A Critical Study of Literature

● Distinctive qualities and ideas
● Textual integrity (parts to the whole)
● Significance (enduring relevance)
● Text's construction, content and language/language features and forms
● Notions of context of the text's composition and reception (in a range of time
periods)
● Aesthetic and imaginative aspects (e.g. How are we positioned to respond to
characters, events, dialogue, narrative voice, etc.?)

Mod C: The Craft of Writing

● Use language creatively and imaginatively for a range of purposes
○ Express insights, evoke emotion, describe the wonder of the natural world,
shape a perspective or to share an aesthetic vision.
● Versatility, power and aesthetics of language
● knowledge of textual forms and features in their own sustained and cohesive
compositions.
● various figurative, rhetorical and linguistic devices
● consider purpose, audience and context to deliberately shape meaning
 TEXTS STUDIED
COMMON MODULE: TEXTS AND HUMAN EXPERIENCES
● ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’, George Orwell

MODULE A: TEXTUAL CONVERSATIONS

● ‘Richard III’, William Shakespeare
● ‘Looking for Richard’

MODULE B: CRITICAL STUDY OF LITERATURE

● The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
● Preludes
● Rhapsody on a Windy Night
● The Hollow Men
● Journey of the Magi

MODULE C: CRAFT OF WRITING

● ‘Eulogy of Gough Whitlam’, Noel Peterson
 Noel Pearson - Eulogy for Gough Whitlam
Paul Keating said the reward for public life is public progress.

For one born estranged from the nation's citizenship, into a humble family of a marginal people striving
in the teeth of poverty and discrimination, today it is assuredly no longer the case.

This is because of the equalities of opportunities afforded by the Whitlam program.

Raised next to the wood heap of the nation's democracy, bequeathed no allegiance to any political
party, I speak to this old man's legacy with no partisan brief.

Rather, my signal honour today on behalf of more people than I could ever know, is to express our
immense gratitude for the public service of this old man.

I once took him on a tour to my village and we spoke about the history of the mission and my youth
under the government of his nemesis, Queensland Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen.

My home was an Aboriginal reserve under a succession of Queensland laws commencing in 1897.

These laws were notoriously discriminatory and the bureaucratic apparatus controlling the reserves
maintained vigil over the smallest details concerning its charges.

Superintendents held vast powers and a cold and capricious bureaucracy presided over this system
for too long in the 20th century.

In June 1975, the Whitlam government enacted the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders Queensland
Discriminatory Laws Act.

The law put to purpose the power conferred upon the Commonwealth Parliament by the 1967
referendum, finally outlawing the discrimination my father and his father lived under since my
grandfather was removed to the mission as a boy and to which I was subject [for] the first 10 years of
my life.

Powers regulating residency on reserves without a permit, the power of reserve managers to enter
private premises without the consent of the householder, legal representation and appeal from court
decisions, the power of reserve managers to arbitrarily direct people to work, and the terms and
conditions of employment, were now required to treat Aboriginal Queenslanders on the same footing
as other Australians.

We were at last free from those discriminations that humiliated and degraded our people.

The companion to this enactment, which would form the architecture of indigenous human rights akin
to the Civil Rights Act 1965 in the United States, was the Racial Discrimination Act.
It was in Queensland under Bjelke-Petersen that its importance became clear.

In 1976, a Wik man from Aurukun on the western Cape York Peninsula, John Koowarta, sought to
purchase the Archer Bend pastoral lease from its white owner.

The Queensland government refused the sale. The High Court's decision in Koowarta versus Bjelke-
Petersen upheld the Racial Discrimination Act as a valid exercise of the external affairs powers of the
Commonwealth.

However, in an act of spite, the Queensland Government converted the lease into the Acher Bend
National Park.

Old man Koowarta died a broken man, the winner of a landmark High Court precedent but the victim of
an appalling discrimination.

The Racial Discrimination Act was again crucial in 1982 when a group of Murray Islanders led by Eddie
Mabo claimed title under the common law to their traditional homelands in the Torres Strait.

In 1985 Bjelke-Petersen sought to kill the Murray Islanders' case by enacting a retrospective
extinguishment of any such title.

There was no political or media uproar against Bjelke-Petersen's law. There was no public
condemnation of the state's manoeuvre. There was no redress anywhere in the democratic forums or
procedures of the state or the nation.

If there were no Racial Discrimination Act that would have been the end of it. Land rights would have
been dead, there would never have been a Mabo case in 1992, there would have been no Native Title
Act under Prime Minister Keating in 1993.

Without this old man the land and human rights of our people would never have seen the light of day.

There would never have been Mabo and its importance to the history of Australia would have been lost
without the Whitlam program.

Only those who have known discrimination truly know its evil.

Only those who have never experienced prejudice can discount the importance of the Racial
Discrimination Act.

This old man was one of those rare people who never suffered discrimination but understood the
importance of protection from its malice.

On this day we will recall the repossession of the Gurindji of Wave Hill, when the Prime Minister said,
"Vincent Lingiari, I solemnly hand to you these deeds as proof in Australian law that these lands
belong to the Gurindji people and I put into your hands this piece of earth itself as a sign that we
restore them to you and your children forever."
It was this old man's initiative with the Woodward Royal Commission that led to Prime Minister Fraser's
enactment of the Aboriginal Land Rights Northern Territory Act, legislation that would see more than
half of the territory restored to its traditional owners.

Of course recalling the Whitlam Government's legacy has been, for the past four decades since the
dismissal, a fraught and partisan business.

Assessments of those three highly charged years and their aftermath divide between the nostalgia and
fierce pride of the faithful, and the equally vociferous opinion that the Whitlam years represented the
nadir of national government in Australia. Let me venture a perspective.

The Whitlam government is the textbook case of reform trumping management.

In less than three years an astonishing reform agenda leapt off the policy platform and into legislation
and the machinery and programs of government.

The country would change forever. The modern cosmopolitan Australia finally emerged like a
technicolour butterfly from its long dormant chrysalis.

And 38 years later we are like John Cleese, Eric Idle and Michael Palin's Jewish insurgents ranting
against the despotic rule of Rome, defiantly demanding "and what did the Romans ever do for us
anyway?"

Apart from Medibank and the Trade Practices Act, cutting tariff protections and no-fault divorce in the
Family Law Act, the Australia Council, the Federal Court, the Order of Australia, federal legal aid, the
Racial Discrimination Act, needs-based schools funding, the recognition of China, the abolition of
conscription, the law reform commission, student financial assistance, the Heritage Commission, non-
discriminatory immigration rules, community health clinics, Aboriginal land rights, paid maternity leave
for public servants, lowering the minimum voting age to 18 years and fair electoral boundaries and
Senate representation for the territories.

Apart from all of this, what did this Roman ever do for us?

And the Prime Minister with that classical Roman mien, one who would have been as naturally garbed
in a toga as a safari suit, stands imperiously with twinkling eyes and that slight self-mocking smile
playing around his mouth, in turn infuriating his enemies and delighting his followers.

There is no need for nostalgia and yearning for what might have been.

The achievements of this old man are present in the institutions we today take for granted and played
no small part in the progress of modern Australia.

There is no need to regret that three years was too short. Was any more time needed? The breadth
and depth of the reforms secured in that short and tumultuous period were unprecedented, and will
likely never again be repeated.

The devil-may-care attitude to management as opposed to reform is unlikely to be seen again by

governments whose priorities are to retain power rather than reform.

The Whitlam program as laid out in the 1972 election platform consisted of three objectives: to
promote equality, to involve the people of Australia in the decision-making processes of our land, and
to liberate the talents and uplift the horizons of the Australian people.

This program is as fresh as it was when first conceived. It scarcely could be better articulated today.

Who would not say the vitality of our democracy is a proper mission of government and should not be
renewed and invigorated.

Who can say that liberating the talents and uplifting the horizons of Australians is not a worthy charter
for national leadership?

It remains to mention the idea of promoting equality. My chances in this nation were a result of the
Whitlam program. My grandparents and parents could never have imagined the doors that opened to
me which were closed to them.

I share this consciousness with millions of my fellow Australians whose experiences speak in some
way or another to the great power of distributed opportunity.

I don't know why someone with this old man's upper middle class background could carry such a
burning conviction that the barriers of class and race of the Australia of his upbringing and maturation
should be torn down and replaced with the unapologetic principle of equality.

I can scarcely point to any white Australian political leader of his vintage and of generations following
of whom it could be said without a shadow of doubt, he harboured not a bone of racial, ethnic or
gender prejudice in his body.

This was more than urbane liberalism disguising human equivocation and private failings; it was a
modernity that was so before its time as to be utterly anachronistic.

For people like me who had no chance if left to the means of our families we could not be more
indebted to this old man's foresight and moral vision for universal opportunity.

Only those born bereft truly know the power of opportunity. Only those accustomed to its consolations
can deprecate a public life dedicated to its furtherance and renewal. This old man never wanted
opportunity himself but he possessed the keenest conviction in its importance.

For it behoves the good society through its government to ensure everyone has chance and
opportunity.

This is where the policy convictions of Prime Minister Whitlam were so germane to the uplift of many
millions of Australians.

We salute this old man for his great love and dedication to his country and to the Australian people.
Themes of Noel Pearson’s Eulogy
Themes: Techniques/Distinctive Features:

Justice/Equality ● Anecdotes
● It is unethical to let others suffer and ● Emotive language
to not help those disadvantaged ● Rhetorical question
when you have the means to ● Inclusive language
support them ● Epithet (old man)
● Allusion
Compassion ● Anaphora
● To empathise is an important quality ● Simile
to aid those who are disadvantaged ● Empathetic tone
● It is imperative to understand the ● Rule of 3
issues that exist, despite never
experiencing them yourself

The Australian Story

● Social reform can start from one
person, yet have long lasting effects
that will forever change history

Comradery
● A sense of comradery among
people when they together strive
towards a similar goal

Quotes
“Only those born bereft truly know the
power of opportunity. Only those
accustomed to its consolations can
deprecate a public life dedicated to its
furtherance and renewal.”
Use this excerpt from Pearson’s speech as
a starting point for a discursive piece which
explores the power of opportunity.
- Power of opportunity
- Gratefulness, greed, lack of
empathy
- Translation: Only those born lacking
privilege know the power of
opportunity. Those who are used to
this/understand the hardships can
mock/criticise the public systems for
continuing these inequities.

“The country would change forever. The - Change, from down in the dumps to
modern cosmopolitan Australia finally a reformed state
emerged like a technicolour butterfly from - Hidden potential
its long dormant chrysalis.”

And 38 years later we are like John Cleese, - Ungratefulness, complaining,

Eric Idle and Michael Palin's Jewish unreasonable people
insurgents ranting against the despotic rule
of Rome, defiantly demanding “and what did
the Romans ever do for us anyway?”

This was more than urbane liberalism - Appreciation, and lack of it initially
disguising human equivocation and private - The need for change, yet the dislike
 failings; it was a modernity that was so towards it
before its time as to be utterly anachronistic. - The effect of actions may not be
truly appreciated or even seen until
much later

We were at last free from those - The effects of discrimination

discriminations that humiliated and - Liberation
degraded our people. - This can extend to bullying

Rhetoric: The art of effective or persuasive speaking or writing, especially the

exploitation of figures of speech and other compositional techniques.

ETHOS- Greek word for ‘character’.

● For speech to be convincing, the speaker must prove they are a credible,
trustworthy
● Speaker must appear to be a person of good moral character so the argument
is accepted as true and acceptable.
PATHOS- Greek word for ‘emotion’, ‘experience’ or ‘suffering’
● Speaker appeals to the emotion, sympathies and imagination so they will be
inclined speaker to agree with the speaker
● Using emotive language and imagery
● Using examples/anecdotes
● These features make audience truly care about the topic
LOGOS- Greek word for ‘logic’ and ‘reason’
● Rational, well-structured argument
● Uses facts and research to support their idea
● Support arguments with facts, statistics and examples, written in logical order.

IMPORTANT TAKEAWAYS OF RHETORIC

Argument → spoke by speaker → rhetoric used → EFFECT ON AUDIENCE