Module B (Standard): Close Study of Literature - concept and rubric quiz

Comparative study of two paired literary texts

Close study of one prescribed literary text, with sustained engagement and a personal informed evaluation

Critical study of an extended unseen text

A study of language acquisition and discourse analysis

That the text is morally upstanding

The structural quality in which the text's form, language and ideas hold together so no major feature could be changed without changing the meaning

That the text has never been censored

That the text won a major literary prize

Quoting only from the opening chapter or first scene

Reading the text once close to the exam

Drawing evidence from across the whole text, tracking patterns and recurrences, and arguing them cumulatively

Writing a long essay even if much of it is plot summary

An opinion essay about whether the student liked the text

The student's own defensible view of the text's significance, grounded in specific textual evidence and analytical argument

A summary of how critics have evaluated the text

A list of the student's favourite quotations

As three separate analytical objects, each in its own paragraph

As three terms to mention in the introduction and then ignore

As three distinct features that work together to produce meaning; the strongest responses argue their integration

As three labels to attach to quotations

That your essay is unusually adaptable, which is a strength

That you have engaged sustainedly with the prescribed text

That your essay has lost the textual specificity Module B requires; you are above the text rather than in it

That your essay is in the top band

The text's font, page count and edition

The kind of text (novel, play, poem sequence, film, non-fiction) and the meaning the kind itself makes possible

The shape of any diagrams in the text

The use of paragraphs versus stanzas

The text's word count and chapter length

The specific arrangement of this text: where framing moments sit, where parallels and contrasts are, where the text builds and breaks patterns

The grammar and syntax of individual sentences

The order in which a film is shot before editing

Listed in the introduction and not mentioned again

Used as the four body-paragraph topics, one each

Functioning as the qualities the essay demonstrates throughout: every paragraph close, evidence sustained, integrity argued via fit, the personal view threaded through

Replaced with synonyms so the marker doesn't notice repetition

Is identical to the Module B (Advanced) prescribed text list

Is the same every year and includes only canonical novels

Rotates with NESA's syllabus cycles; the prescribed texts and any extracts come from the current NESA HSC English Standard prescriptions list

Is set by the student in consultation with their school