2021

2021 HSC English Advanced

TRIAL HSC: Common Module Texts and Human Experiences
Marking Guidelines

Text 1 -Visual and Book Blurb

Choosing ONE visual technique, consider how this technique works together with the
book blurb to explore inconsistencies in family relationships?
(3 marks)

Criteria Marks

Discusses skilfully ONE visual technique and how this works together with the book blurb to explore 3
inconsistencies in family relationships.

Discusses effectively ONE visual technique and how this works together with the book blurb to explore 2
inconsistencies in family relationships.

Describes elements of the visual and how this works together with the book blurb to explore 1
inconsistencies in family relationships.

Answers could include:

• Visual Techniques:
- Symbolism – overturned chair at table, stands out from the others. One glass of wine on the table set
for four suggests isolation rather than family connections.
- Colour contrast - dark blue distorted shadows in the background, bright blue in the foreground
- Caption – “You can choose your friends…” carries connotations of family dysfunction
- Scale, large title – “Just an Ordinary Family”
- Any others that can be well supported by evidence and ideas.

• Blurb:
- Juxtaposition of emotive words “family ties, betrayal and sacrifice” and “Every family has its secrets”
- Jealousy conveyed through tone “She wants her twin sister Libby's enviable life.”
- Metaphor and hyperbole “As the family implodes, the fallout for these four women will be inescapable”
- And anything else that can be well supported by evidence and ideas.

Text 2 - Poem
 How does Limón’s use of form and language explore the contradictory experience of
being a wife?
(3 marks)

Criteria Marks

Explains skilfully how Limón’s use of form and language explore the contradictory experience of being a
3
wife.

Explains effectively how Limón’s use of form and language explore the contradictory experience of
2
being a wife.

Describes how Limón’s use of form and language explore the contradictory experience of being a wife. 1

Answers could include:

• Free verse – flowing ideas about women’s roles, represents frustration, complexity
• Enjambment or stream of consciousness – meandering thought/meditation on life
• Hyperbole – “Their eyes rolled up and over and out their pretty young heads.”
• Rhetorical questions – “Wife, why does it sound like a job?”
• Direct quote - “I need a wife” the famous feminist wrote, “a wife that will keep my clothes clean, ironed,
mended, replaced if need be.”
• Allusion to marriage vows – “A wife that does, fixes soothes, honors, obeys”
• Anaphora – “the one who”
• Simile – “the kettle steaming over loud like a train whistle”
• Asyndeton – speeds up the pace
• And anything else that can be well supported by evidence and ideas.

Text 3 - TED Talk Transcript

Evaluate how this text challenges our assumptions of important human connections.
(4 marks)

Criteria Marks

Evaluates skillfully how this text challenges our assumptions of important human connections 4

Evaluates successfully how this text challenges our assumptions of important human connections 3

Evaluates with supporting evidence from the text how this text challenges our assumptions of important
2
human connections

Describes with some evidence from the text how this text challenges our assumptions of important
1
human connections

Answers could include:

 • First person plural captures the universality of this human experience.
• Conversational tone appeals to listeners
• Hyperbole creates humour “I'm obsessed with talking to strangers”
• The use of personal anecdotes to substantiate her claims and gain listener’s trust “So one day, I was
standing on a corner waiting for the light to change”
• Ethos – position of expertise “these quick interactions can lead to a feeling that sociologists call "fleeting
intimacy."
• Pathos – “A brief experience that has emotional resonance and meaning. It's the good feeling I got from
being saved from the death trap of the storm drain by the old man.”
• Logos – “These studies prove how significant these interactions can be; how this special form of closeness
gives us something we need as much as we need our friends and our families.”
• Colloquial language “huh?”
• Use of rhetorical questions – “These sound kind of meaningless, right?”
• Second person – directly addresses listener “When you talk to strangers, you're making beautiful
interruptions into the expected narrative of your daily life.”
• And anything else that can be well supported by evidence and ideas.

Text 4 - Prose Extract: Memoir

Explain how Garner uses metaphor to examine the role of storytelling in human relationships.
(4 marks)
Criteria Marks

Evaluates skillfully how Garner uses metaphor to examine the role of storytelling in human
4
relationships.

Evaluates successfully how Garner uses metaphor to examine the role of storytelling in human
3
relationships.

Evaluates with supporting evidence from the text how Garner uses metaphor to examine the role of
2
storytelling in human relationships.

Describes with some evidence from the text how Garner uses metaphor to examine the role of
1
storytelling in human relationships.

• Landscape metaphor: “each sister has her own quite individual map of that territory: the mountains and
rivers are in different places, the borders are differently constituted and guarded”.
• Metafictional metaphor: “I tried hard to be responsible, to vanish, to be swallowed up by the texture of the
writing. Because the one who records will never be forgiven.”
• Shrine metaphor: “Thus we end up with a series of shrines”
• Story metaphor: “It becomes another chapter in our fanatically detailed, multi-track story about ourselves,
which is hilarious... We are major characters in the stories of each other’s lives”
• Performance metaphor: “we are all acting in an enormous comedy that will go on till we die. It has no
audience but its own performers: our children and husbands roll their eyes and walk out of rooms.”
• And anything else that can be well supported by evidence and ideas.
Text 5 - Prose Extract: Novel

Analyse the ways this text invites readers to see the world of motherhood differently.
(6 marks)
 Criteria Marks

Analyses skillfully the ways this text invites readers to see the world of motherhood differently. 6

Analyses thoughtfully the ways this text invites readers to see the world of motherhood differently. 5

Analyses the ways this text invites readers to see the world of motherhood differently. 4

Describes the ways this text invites readers to see the world of motherhood differently. 3

Attempts to describe the ways this text invites readers to see the world of motherhood differently. 2

Elementary response to task 0-1

Answers could include:

• Disappointed tone: “She had been worried that this might be so.”
• Juxtaposition of motherhood with young age “She was nineteen years of age, though this year she felt
much older.””
• Italics to convey inner thoughts – motherhood as an expectation of marriage, not borne out of love, choice
etc “Be thankful. When you came here, you had nothing.”
• Simile conveys hopelessness, lack of power “She still had nothing, Binnaz often thought; all her
possessions were as ephemeral and rootless as dandelion seeds.”
• Italics “used” to convey a woman’s worthlessness after the loss of virginity “There was no guarantee that
her next marriage would be any happier or a new husband more to her liking, and who would want her
anyway, a divorcee, a used woman?”
• Simile conveys lack of agency, belonging in the family and within herself “Burdened with these suspicions,
she moved around the house, around her bedroom, around her own head, like an uninvited guest.”
• Hopeful tone challenges reader’s expectations of motherhood – positions child as saviour and motherhood
as a sign of woman’s worth “Everything would be different with the birth of this baby, she assured herself.
She would no longer feel ill at ease, no longer insecure.”
• And anything else that can be well supported by evidence and ideas.