Quick questions on Responding and composing in the HSC English Studies exam

What order are things in? Whose point of view do we follow? These questions turn a blank page into a plan.

When a text appears that you have never seen, your first job is to work out what human experience it represents. Read it once for the overall feeling, then read it again with a pen, marking the moments where a choice is doing work: a strong verb, a sudden short sentence, a repeated word, a shift in tone. You are not trying to catch everything. You are trying to find two or three choices you can write about confidently.

For a short-answer response worth a few marks, one tight paragraph is enough. Use technique, example, effect, link.

The composition task asks you to write a short imaginative, discursive or persuasive text on human experiences. You will often be given a stimulus: a line, an image, a phrase. The marker wants a controlled piece that represents an experience through deliberate choices, not a rushed plot.

Once for the overall feeling, once with a pen to mark two or three techniques you can write about confidently; do not try to catch everything.

Choose one mode, one small moment, and one controlling image; this plan takes under three minutes and prevents a piece running out of structure partway through.

Skip scene-setting entirely; open on an object, a line of dialogue, or an action already in progress.