What the Narrative and human experiences focus area asks in the 2024 HSC English Studies syllabus

New syllabus (first HSC 2027). This page follows the English Studies 11-12 (2024) syllabus. If you are sitting the 2026 HSC, use the older English Studies module pages on this subject instead. See what's changed.

Where this focus area sits

English Studies in Year 12 has three focus areas under the 2024 syllabus: Narrative and human experiences, Writing for purpose and Elective focus areas. This page is about the first one. In the 2017 course, the part that all students studied together was the Common Module. The new syllabus organises Year 12 around focus areas instead, and Narrative and human experiences is the one about stories and what it is to be human.

The HSC exam for English Studies is optional. If your school enters you and you sit it, it is one written paper worth 60 marks, with 2 hours of working time plus 10 minutes of reading time. The paper has three sections: Section I, Narrative and human experiences (15 marks, 4 or 5 short-answer questions); Section II, Narrative and human experiences (15 marks, one extended response on your prescribed text); and Section III, Writing for purpose (30 marks, 2 or 3 items, one worth at least 15 marks, asking for informative, analytical, imaginative or persuasive writing). In the 2017 course the paper was 70 marks and 2 hours 30 minutes, so it is shorter and smaller now. An English Studies mark counts towards an ATAR only if the exam is sat, so talk to your teacher about what your goals are.

NESA publishes sample exam material for English Studies on the NSW Curriculum site (linked below). We recommend opening it early so the layout and the types of tasks are familiar. We do not copy or paraphrase it here.

What the focus area is about

The name gives you the two big ideas.

Narrative means the way a story is told. A story is not just what happens. It is also who tells it, what the teller chooses to show or leave out, the order of events, and the voice and tone. Two storytellers can describe the same event and make you feel very different things.

Human experiences means what it is like to be a person: relationships, belonging, struggle, change, memory, identity, joy and loss. Texts show these experiences, and they also shape how we think about them.

Put together, the focus area asks: how do the ways stories are told help us understand what it is to be human?

The prescribed text

NESA prescribes six texts for this focus area, and you study one of them in depth:

• Michelle Law, Miss Peony (drama; Currency Press, 2023).
• Rachel Perkins, One Night the Moon (film, 2001).
• Bruce Dawe, Selected poems of Bruce Dawe (NESA, 2026). Set poems: Enter Without So Much as Knocking, Up the Wall, Homo Suburbiensis, Weapons Training, Life Cycle, The Not-so-good Earth, The Cornflake.
• Oodgeroo Noonuccal, My People (Wiley, 2020). Set poems: Corroboree, Ballad of Totems, No More Boomerang, Son of Mine, We Are Going, The Past, Reed Flute Cave.
• Favel Parrett, Past the Shallows (Hachette, 2013).
• Ellen van Neerven (ed.), Flock: First Nations Stories Then and Now (University of Queensland Press, 2021). Set stories: Cloud Busting (Winch), Shadows on the Wall (Weller), Honey (Thompson), Galah (Saward), Dreamers (Lucashenko), Forbidden Fruit (Leane).

This list was read from NESA's Year 12 page on 7 October 2026; check NESA's prescriptions page for full bibliographic details. In the exam, Section II is an extended response on your prescribed text (15 of the 60 marks), and Section I asks 4 or 5 short-answer questions on unseen stimulus, so use your prescribed text for Section II and your wider reading for ideas in Section I.

Reading a narrative closely

Here is a simple way to look at any text, in four steps.

1. What is shown? Describe the experience the text presents, in plain language. Who is involved, and what are they going through?
2. Who is telling it? Identify the voice or point of view. Is it a character speaking about themselves, a narrator watching from outside, a camera that follows one person, or a mix?
3. How is it built? Look at choices that shape the experience: the order of events, a flashback, a repeated image, a change of tone, a long silence, a close-up, a piece of music.
4. What does it make us feel or think? Say what the reader or viewer is invited to understand, and link it back to the choices in step 3.

The marks are for step 3 and step 4. Many students stop at step 1, which is retelling the story. Your task is to explain how the choices create meaning.

Ideas that are worth thinking about

You do not need big theory. You do need ideas to talk about. These questions help:

• How do the stories we tell about ourselves shape who we become?
• What makes a person feel they belong, or that they do not?
• How do hard experiences change people, and how do texts show recovery or the lack of it?
• Why do two people have different versions of the same event?
• How do texts make a person we have never met feel real to us?

When you answer, always bring the idea back to something the composer does in a text. "The writer makes us feel sympathy" is weak. "By telling the story in the first person and letting her describe small details, the writer makes us feel close to the character, so we sympathise with her" is much stronger.

Showing your understanding in writing

In the exam and in assessment tasks, you will be asked to respond to texts. The question may ask you to explain, discuss or analyse. Always check the key verb, and then follow it. A short plan before you start helps: your main point, two or three pieces of evidence from your text, and a closing idea.

Strong responses usually:

• make a clear point about human experience
• refer to specific moments in the text, described accurately
• explain the effect of the writer's or filmmaker's choices
• link back to the question in every paragraph

A worked reading of a small text

Here is an original two-sentence text, written for practice: 'Every Sunday Dad washed the car, though it never went anywhere. We watched from the window, learning how a man says he is sorry without saying it.'

Step 1, what is shown: a father repeats a small task, and the children watch. Step 2, who tells: a first-person narrator, speaking for a group ('we'). Step 3, how it is built: the repeated routine (every Sunday), the odd detail that the car never goes anywhere, and the narrator's look through the window, which puts the family at a distance from the father. Step 4, what it makes us understand: the father's apology is shown through action, not words, and the children understand it only by watching. The choices make a hidden feeling visible.

Notice that the explanation took a few sentences and was specific to the words on the page. That is the standard to aim for with your prescribed text.

Keeping a response notebook

Keep a small notebook, with one page per text, including your prescribed text. For each, write the experience it shows, the voice, three choices and the effect of each. Review it weekly. When a question comes, you will have material ready, and you will not need to rely on memory for exact quotations.

Common traps

• Retelling the story instead of explaining the choices.
• Listing techniques with no explanation of what they do.
• Using a quotation or scene from memory and getting it wrong. It is better to describe a scene accurately.
• Saying "the text shows" without saying what it shows or how.
• Not using the words of the question in the answer.