Quick questions on Learning from mentor texts in HSC English Advanced Module C

The Module C prescribed texts are not on the syllabus to be analysed in the way Module B prescribed texts are. They are on the syllabus to be learned from.

Five families of craft move that the Module C prescribed texts almost always offer.

The difference between a useful borrowing and a useless one is precision. A vague borrowing ("write like Atwood") produces pastiche. A precise borrowing ("use Atwood's habit of ending a paragraph on a short clause that reframes the longer ones above it") produces craft.

The danger of mentor-text work is producing a piece that sounds like the model rather than like the student. Three disciplines that produce learned craft rather than copied voice.

The Module C prescribed list usually includes mentor texts in different modes (imaginative, discursive, persuasive). Reading across the list is part of the work.

If your task includes a reflection, mentor texts are part of the reflection's content. The reflection is where you make the craft borrowing visible to the marker.

Paper 2 Section 3 often includes an unseen stimulus that functions partly as a mentor text within the exam. The stimulus may be a passage, an image, a quotation. Three moves under pressure.

Imitation over learning. A piece that sounds like the model but does not transfer any of its moves to new material.

The shape of the sentence. How clauses are arranged. The relation between sentence length and effect.

The persona the writing constructs and the emotional register it holds. The diction. The relation to the implied reader.

The kind of image the writer reaches for. The frequency. The integration of image with argument or action.

How the text is organised at the paragraph, scene, and whole-text levels. The places where the writer chooses to break, return, or repeat.

How the writer brings the reader into the piece and what assumptions the writer makes about who is reading.

If the mentor text uses a syntactic move on a domestic scene, try the same move on a public scene. The transfer of context separates craft from imitation.

A piece that contains one or two deliberate borrowed moves looks crafted. A piece that contains ten looks like fan fiction. Restraint is the difference.