2013 Notes from the Marking Centre – English Extension 2
Introduction
This document has been produced for the teachers and candidates of the Stage 6 English Extension 2 course. It contains comments on candidate responses to the 2013 Higher School Certificate examination, highlighting their strengths in particular parts of the examination and indicating where candidates need to improve.
This document should be read along with:
- the English Stage 6 Syllabus
- the English Extension 2 marking guidelines
- English Extension 2 – Major Work Frequently Asked Questions
- English Extension 2 Major Work Fact Sheets
- Advice for HSC students about examinations
- other support documents developed by the Board of Studies, Teaching and Educational Standards NSW to assist in the teaching and learning of English in Stage 6.
Short story
Candidates showed strength in these areas:
- presenting authentic character voices that contributed to the integrity of the work
- contextualising narratives with an accurate sense of time and place
- experimenting with form to develop the concept and purpose of the work
- providing descriptions that progressed the plot
- developing complex characters.
Candidates need to improve in these areas:
- developing an awareness of the ideological underpinnings of successful short stories from Extension and Advanced course material
- developing an awareness of time and temporal shifts
- ensuring that dialogue is necessary and realistic
- not using dialogue to repeat the narrative message
- understanding the significance of art and musical motifs.
Poem
Candidates showed strength in these areas:
- providing evidence of poetic resolution in the final poems, indicating a unity of design that gave the work integrity and coherence
- paying attention to rhythm, balance and lyricism (where appropriate) in the individual poems, but also in the suite as a whole
- displaying coherence even when experimenting with multiple voices and fragmented structures
- using imagery, rhythm, diction, sound devices, form and structure to shape meaning
- supporting Major Works with rigorous investigation into form and content.
Candidates need to improve in these areas:
- choosing a topic or focus that is not simplistic, clichéd or melodramatic
- not relying on rhyme patterns, distorted syntax and awkward rhythms that are not sustained
- moving beyond specific forms, such as sonnet, ballad, haiku and nursery rhymes
- considering the impact of research on the specifics of the work, ie how a particular writer/piece influenced the candidate to alter or develop the work.
Critical response
Candidates showed strength in these areas:
- presenting a clear and stimulating argument
- demonstrating depth and breadth of research into a particular text
- demonstrating understanding of audience and purpose
- manipulating structural features of the medium, for example subheadings, cut outs, topic sentences
- embedding research within the Major Work and using sources to enhance and develop the argument.
Candidates need to improve in these areas:
- developing an argument
- maintaining focus in arguments
- using terms, for example ‘liminal’ or ‘postmodern’, correctly
- using a form of critical response that is controlled and suits the content, audience and the purpose
- developing their own argument rather than including long quotes from critics.
Script
Candidates showed strength in these areas:
- writing scripts that were original, intellectual and thought provoking, often with intertextual links to other plays and/or characters
- using the stage as a space with meaning – balancing movement and set/props
- presenting sophisticated dialogue and distinctive characters
- demonstrating knowledge of their chosen approach
- presenting film and television scripts that are familiar with conventions and ways to use them for purpose/meaning.
Candidates need to improve in these areas:
- developing greater awareness of the constraints of short film or short play, for example a greater spatial awareness and consideration of how the script could work as a performance
- being discerning in ‘choosing to write a postmodern script’
- providing a clear indication about the type of script constructed
- avoiding overtly didactic dialogue
- ensuring that scripts convey an extension of Stage 6 coursework.
Speech
Candidates showed strength in these areas:
- shaping the work to align with context
- maintaining awareness of audience throughout the speech
- using voice with deliberate variations in pitch, tone, volume, accent, manipulating the voice for dramatic effect, purpose, audience and the sense of the speaker/persona
- using literary references, allusions and textual references that demonstrate awareness of and connection to classical, canonical and contemporary writings where relevant
- demonstrating originality throughout the speech (and particularly across the speeches if there was more than one speech constructed)
- integrating a range of rhetorical devices.
Candidates need to improve in these areas:
- developing insight into the subject
- creating an orientation for the listener of the speech’s context
- manipulating voice and rhetorical structures for the speech medium
- explaining why the speech medium is best suited for the work’s purpose and audience
- justifying and analysing stylistic choices such as structure, persona and rhetorical features.
Radio drama
Candidates showed strength in these areas:
- creating a world – a dramatic story – through voice and sound
- presenting dialogue that carefully delineated and distinguished characters
- communicating at the commencement of the radio drama as to which radio station might broadcast the drama thus displaying a key sense of their target audience
- presenting a narrative/dramatic arc that served to unify the action, propel the narrative forward and engage the listener.
Candidates need to improve in these areas:
- creating a sense of drama, and a sense of the conflict required for this form
- using aural cues that alert the listener to who is speaking and to whom
- avoiding gratuitous use of sound effects
- providing directions in the script that translate to the aural medium.
Performance poetry
Candidates showed strength in these areas:
- using poetic features that showed an awareness of performative elements
- using devices such as imagery, rhyme, rhythm, alliteration, assonance, dissonance, punning, wordplay and onomatopoeia effectively
- creating authentic, satirical or juxtaposed voices
- presenting sophisticated concepts that aligned with purpose and audience, strong technical choices and production that had been carefully edited with an awareness of the intended listeners.
Candidates need to improve in these areas:
- developing awareness of the performance poetry form
- citing performance poetry as part of the independent investigation in the Reflection Statements
- displaying an awareness of the need to use voice effectively in performance
- using concepts that were clichéd or predictable.
Video
Candidates showed strength in these areas:
- providing appropriate and well-integrated soundtracks that did not swamp the diegetic sounds of the action
- controlling technical video/film elements and fluently integrating the three processes of film production (pre, shooting and post)
- demonstrating strong editing skills with fluent transition and logical progression between scenes and events
- linking construction of plot, characters and setting to a strong central concept
- showing insightful discussion of film theory and how it had been incorporated into the production choices of the video in the Reflection Statement.
Candidates need to improve in these areas:
- giving consideration to the planning and execution of the work
- not overusing visual motifs or metaphors
- including discussion of independent investigation of the concept and/or the short video form in the Reflection Statement
- providing evidence of subversion in the work.
Digital media
Candidates showed strength in these areas:
- making the relationship between the concept(s) and choice of the multimedia form clear
- controlling the media to combine sound, movement, images, written text and video into the piece of multimedia
- investigating the multimedia programs used to construct the Major Work
- navigating effectively
- making clear the relationship between the concept(s) and choice of the multimedia form.
Candidates need to improve in these areas:
- including interactivity
- including a logic map
- acknowledging material, especially choice of graphics
- investigating the concepts represented in the Major Works
- including self-reflexive elements in the Reflection Statement
- identifying and analysing their choice of form while providing limited evidence of investigation into the form.
NSW Government