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NSWEnglish Extension 2Quick questions
The Major Work
Quick questions on Composing performance poetry and speeches for the HSC English Extension 2 Major Work
4short Q&A pairs drawn directly from our worked dot-point answer. For full context and worked exam questions, read the parent dot-point page.
What is the speech as a composed form?Show answer
A speech is a crafted oration with a purpose: to move, persuade, commemorate or unsettle. Investigating the form means studying rhetoric, the management of an argument across spoken time, the deployment of repetition, triadic structure, shifts of register, and the calculated pause. A strong speech Major Work is not a printed essay read aloud. It is built on rhetorical architecture that only fully works when voiced.
What is investigating the form?Show answer
Watch and listen to performers and orators closely. Notice how a spoken-word poet uses anaphora to build momentum, how a great speech paces its escalation, how silence is used as a weapon, how the body reinforces or undercuts the words. Reading like a composer here means studying delivery as much as text, because in these forms delivery is part of the composition.
What is the supporting print text?Show answer
You submit a print text with the performance. This is the score, and it should make the deliberate construction legible: line breaks, marked pauses, emphasis, staging or delivery notes where relevant. It demonstrates that the performance was composed rather than improvised, and it lets a marker see the craft decisions behind what they hear and see.
What is rehearsal as part of composition?Show answer
In performance forms, rehearsal is not separate from writing. Hearing the work aloud reveals where rhythm stumbles, where a line is unspeakable, where a pause dies. Strong students revise the text against the performance repeatedly, treating delivery as a draft that feeds back into the words. The journal should capture this loop between composing and performing.
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