English Literary Studies syllabus, dot point by dot point

Write a writer's statement that explains the deliberate choices behind a transformative text and demonstrates critical understanding of the original.

How do you write a writer's statement that proves the critical understanding behind your creative choices?

Create an original written, oral or multimodal text that uses literary conventions deliberately to demonstrate command of craft learned from studied texts.

How do you write your own original text so that craft choices show what you have learned from studying literature?

Create a re-creative or transformative text that reshapes a studied text and uses the new form to demonstrate critical understanding of the original.

How do you transform a studied text into a new piece of writing that demonstrates real critical understanding?

Compare how two or more texts represent ideas, perspectives and values, and analyse what the comparison reveals.

Responding to Texts (50%)

Topic overview →

How do you build a genuine comparison that argues something neither text could show alone?

Read closely and analyse how specific language and structural choices in a passage produce meaning and effect.

How do you turn a close reading of a short passage into a sustained analytical argument?

Structure a sustained analytical response so that a clear thesis governs every paragraph and the argument develops toward a considered conclusion.

How do you organise an analytical response so its argument builds rather than just accumulates?

Use appropriate critical terminology and metalanguage accurately to evaluate texts and justify interpretations with precision.

How do you use literary terminology so that it sharpens your analysis instead of decorating it?

Use close textual analysis of the short texts studied in class to develop one informed, sustained interpretation rather than a survey of features.

How do you build a sustained interpretation of a short text studied closely with your class?

Apply a named critical perspective to a text and analyse how that lens foregrounds particular features and produces a specific reading.

How does choosing a critical perspective change which features of a text you notice and what it seems to mean?

Analyse how visual and graphic elements - image, composition, layout and their relationship to words - create meaning and effect in a literary text.

How do you analyse a text whose meaning is made by images, layout and the interplay of word and picture?

Analyse how voice, point of view and narrative perspective shape what a reader knows and how a reader judges, and explain the effect of the chosen vantage.

How does the choice of who narrates, and how, control what a reader knows, trusts and feels?

Analyse how a text conveys values, attitudes and ideologies and positions its reader to accept or resist them through its language and structural choices.

How does a text steer a reader toward particular values and attitudes without ever stating them outright?

Analyse how a text is shaped by its author's choices and by the contexts of its production and reception.

How does the relationship between author, text and context shape the meaning a reader makes?

Analyse how a text draws meaning from its references to, echoes of, or evocation of other texts, and explain the effect of those connections.

How does a text gain meaning from its relationship to other texts, and how do you analyse that without just spotting references?

Evaluate how different critical perspectives produce different readings of a text and argue a reasoned position among them.

How do you weigh competing critical readings of a text and stake out a defensible position of your own?

Select an independent text to compare with a shared-study text so the pairing shares enough common ground to argue and enough difference to reveal something.

Text Study (external, 30%)

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How do you choose an independent text that pairs well with a shared text and makes a genuine comparison possible?

Respond to unseen text in the 90-minute Critical Reading exam by analysing closely and arguing a focused response under time pressure.

How do you read an unseen passage under time pressure and build a controlled analytical response in ninety minutes?

Adapt close-reading strategy to the text type in front of you - poetry, prose fiction or non-fiction - so you analyse what each form makes most meaningful.

How do you adapt your reading strategy to whatever text type appears in the Critical Reading exam?

Develop a focused, arguable inquiry question that drives a genuine comparison of two texts for the Comparative Text Study.

How do you frame an inquiry question for the Comparative Text Study that is arguable, focused and genuinely comparative?

Plan and write the external Comparative Text Study critical essay as an integrated comparison driven by a single arguable thesis.

How do you build an integrated comparative essay that argues something neither studied text could reveal on its own?