2016

HIGHER SCHOOL CERTIFICATE

EXAMINATION

English (Standard)
and English (Advanced)
Paper 1 Area of Study

Total marks 45
Section I

General Instructions
Reading time 10 minutes
Working time 2 hours
Write using black pen

Pages 27

15 marks
Attempt Question 1
Allow about 40 minutes for this section
Section II

Pages 89

15 marks
Attempt Question 2
Allow about 40 minutes for this section
Section III

Pages 1011

15 marks
Attempt Question 3
Allow about 40 minutes for this section

1050

Section I
15 marks
Attempt Question 1
Allow about 40 minutes for this section
Answer the question on pages 27 of the Paper 1 Writing Booklet. Extra writing
booklets are available.
Your answers will be assessed on how well you:
demonstrate understanding of the way perceptions of discovery are shaped in
and through texts
describe, explain and analyse the relationship between language, text and context
Question 1 (15 marks)
Examine Texts 1, 2, 3 and 4 carefully and then answer the questions on page 7.
Text 1 Short story extract
Extract from To Dream Of Stars' by Peter M. Ball
The tower rises from the hills, dominating the uneven horizon, a crooked silhouette
against the twilight. The glowing dome at the tip points at the emerging stars, the
length of the tower twisted like the four-joined finger of a great and alien hand. He
feels the strangeness of the building, a discordant note casting echoes in the
chambers of his heart, but the otherness calls to him regardless. John Flamsteed is
promised to God in both body and spirit, but he knows his heart and mind now
belong to that tower forever.
Eyes off it, his father orders, cuffing the boy across the back of the head, and John
falls forward, clinging to the horses mane to keep himself in the saddle. The older
Flamsteed rides on, glaring at the observatory. Its evil, his father says, and
dangerous yet. You will not look at it. You will not even think of it, or the creatures
that dwell within. Do you understand?
John Flamsteed nods, used to obedience without understanding. His father sees evil
where other men see nothing, though perhaps this once John can see the hint of
corruption his father fears. He averts his gaze, but the tower remains. It looms on the
fringe of his vision, a constant threat. The sight of it pulls at his heart, luring him as if
hes been hooked on a strand of twine wrapped around the towers domed tip.
Text 1 continues on page 3
2

Text 1 (continued)
They have three days of business in town, just long enough for John to hear the
stories. He absorbs them, one by one, the details coalescing as he weaves rumour
and folk-tale together. There are those that tell him the yellow texture of the tower
comes from tiles made of dragon bone, that its twisting mass is held upright by
prayer and dark magic. The accusations of magic perturb him, an affront to both God
and reason, but he listens and nods and asks again when the moment presents
itself. There are folk-tales aplenty to hear, but none to satisfy his thirst for
comprehension.
On their final night in town, his birthday, John Flamsteed skulks out of the room he
shares with his father. The moon is a thumbnail sliver overhead, a sliver so brief its
presence barely registers against the scattered wash of stars. John Flamsteed
stumbles through the unfamiliar streets, toes catching the rough cut cobblestones,
tripping his way into the open fields and the hills beyond. The air smells fresh and
clean, but the aftertaste is sour. He climbs the unfamiliar slopes, his young body
straining against the rough terrain hidden by darkness.
The Observatory serves as a compass, allowing him to orient himself against the
empty darkness the tower casts against the endless stars. Eventually John stands at
the base, staring up at a tower tall enough to brush against sky. John Flamsteed
examines the pale shingles, stands close enough that he can reach out and touch
their worn exterior with the tips of his young fingers. They feel like the smoothed
edge of a predators incisor, noble, deadly and beautiful in a single moment.
He thinks of the stories the townsfolk tell about children raised to the Astronomers
Royal, kidnapped and replaced by changelings, stripped of their humanity by the
Astronomers training. In the lonely light of the thumbnail moon, John Flamsteed
makes a promise. He will return here, one day, free from the shackles of his fathers
assumptions. He will give himself over to the stars and the Others, all in the name of
God and his country. Damn the impossibilities, he will enter the tower and join the
ranks of the Astronomers Royal.
End of Text 1

Text 2 Image

Painting The Discovery' by

Josephine Wall, 2005

Text 3 Poem
Discovery' by Florence Ripley Mastin
The grey path glided before me
Through cool, green shadows;
Little leaves hung in the soft air
Like drowsy moths;
A group of dark trees, gravely conferring,
Made me conscious of the gaucherie of sound;
Farther on, a slim lilac
Drew me down to her on the warm grass.
How sweet is peace!
My serene heart said.
Then, suddenly, in a curve of the road,
Red tulips!
A bright battalion, swaying,
They marched with fluttering flags,
And gay fifes playing!
A swift flame leapt in my heart;
I burned with passion;
I was tainted with cruelty;
I wanted to march in the wind,
To tear the silence with gay music,
And to slash the sober green
Until it sobbed and bled.
The tulips have found me out.

This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on August 23, 2015, by the Academy of American Poets.

Text 4 Nonfiction extract

Extract from In Deep' by Burkhard Bilger
On his thirteenth day underground, when hed come to the edge of the known
world and was preparing to pass beyond it, Marcin Gala placed a call to the
surface. Hed travelled more than three miles through the earth by then, over
stalagmites and boulder fields, cave-ins and vaulting galleries. Hed spidered down
waterfalls, inched along crumbling ledges, and bellied through tunnels so tight that
his back touched the roof with every breath. Now he stood at the shore of a small,
dark pool under a dome of sulfurous flowstone. He felt the weight of the mountain
above hima mile of solid rockand wondered if hed ever find his way back
again. It was his last chance to hear his wife and daughters voices before the
cave swallowed him up.
Base camp, base camp, base camp, he said. This is Camp Four. Over.
His voice travelled from the handset to a Teflon-coated wire that he had strung
along the wall. It wound its way through sump and tunnel, up the stair-step
passages of the Chev system to a ragged cleft in a hillside seven thousand feet
above sea level. There, in a cloud forest in the state of Oaxaca, Mexico, lay the
staging area for an attempt to map the deepest cave in the worlda kind of
Everest expedition turned upside down. Galas voice fell soft and muffled in the
mountains belly, husky with fatigue. He asked his seven-year-old, Zuzia, how she
liked the Pippi Longstocking book shed been reading, and wondered what the
weather was like on the surface. Then the voice of Bill Stone, the leader of the
expedition, broke over the line. Were counting on you guys, he said. This is a
big day. Do your best, but dont do anything radical. Be brave, but not too brave.
Chev has what cavers call a Hollywood entrance: a gaping maw in the face
of a cliff, like King Kongs lair on Skull Island. A long golden meadow leads up to it,
bordered by rows of pines and a stream that murmurs in from the right. It feels
ceremonial somehow, like the approach to an altar. As you walk beneath the
overhang, the temperature drops, and a musty, fungal scent drifts up from the caves
throat, where the childrens bones were found. The stream passes between piles of
rubble and boulders, their shadows thrown into looming relief by your headlamp.
Then the walls close in and the wind begins to rise. Its easy to see why the Cuicatec
felt that some dark presence abided herethat something in this place needed to be
appeased.
Gala had been exploring Chev with Stone so long that he could nearly
navigate it blindfolded. After a while, he said, you start to create a map of the system
in your mind, to memorize each contortion and foothold needed to climb through a
passage. On the steepest pitches, certain rocks almost seemed to smile and wave at
him, and to reach for his hand. He would grab them, thinking, Old friend! And yet the
deeper he went the more unfamiliar the territory became. By the thirteenth day, the
escalating uncertaintythe risk of a careless stumble or a snapped limb so far from
the surfacewas starting to weigh on him. The further in you go, the more you begin
to doubt and question yourself, he told me. What the fuck am I doing here?

This extract can be found at http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/04/21/in-deep-2

Question 1 (continued)
Text 1 Short story extract
(a)

How does the author convey the protagonists desire to enter the building?

Text 2 Image
(b)

How does the image express the concept of emotional discovery?

Text 3 Poem
(c)

Explain how the poem portrays negative connotations.

Text 4 Nonfiction extract

(d)

Analyse how the text portrays discovery as intimidating yet exciting.

Text 1, Text 2, Text 3 and Text 4 Short story extract, Image, Poem and
Nonfiction extract
(e)

Compare how TWO of the texts represent the significance of curiosity in the
process of discovering.

End of Question 1

Section II
15 marks
Attempt Question 2
Allow about 40 minutes for this section
Answer the question on pages 815 of the Paper 1 Writing Booklet. Extra writing
booklets are available.
Your answer will be assessed on how well you:
express understanding of discovery in the context of your studies
organise, develop and express ideas using language appropriate to audience,
purpose and context
Question 2 (15 marks)
Compose a piece of imaginative writing which explores how positive discoveries can
coincide with negative discoveries.
Use ONE of the images on the next page as the central element of your writing.

Question 2 continues on page 9

Question 2 (continued)

End of Question 2
9

Section III
15 marks
Attempt Question 3
Allow about 40 minutes for this section
Answer the question on pages 1624 of the Paper 1 Writing Booklet. Extra writing
booklets are available.
Your answer will be assessed on how well you:
demonstrate understanding of the concept of discovery in the context of your study
analyse, explain and assess the ways discovery is represented in a variety of texts
organise, develop and express ideas using language appropriate to audience,
purpose and context
Question 3 (15 marks)
Discuss how uncomfortable discoveries can also be intriguing.

How is this perspective on discovery explored in your prescribed text and ONE other
related text of your own choosing?
The prescribed texts are listed on the next page.

Question 3 continues on page 11

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Question 3 (continued)
The prescribed texts are:
Prose Fiction James Bradley, Wrack
Kate Chopin, The Awakening
Tara June Winch, Swallow the Air
Nonfiction Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything
Ernesto Che Guevara, The Motorcycle Diaries
Drama

Michael Gow, Away

Jane Harrison, Rainbows End
from Vivienne Cleven et al., Contemporary Indigenous Plays

Shakespearean
Drama
Film
Poetry

William Shakespeare, The Tempest

Ang Lee, Life of Pi
Rosemary Dobson, Rosemary Dobson Collected
The prescribed poems are:
* Young Girl at a Window
* Wonder
* Painter of Antwerp
* Travellers Tale
* The Tiger
* Cock Crow
* Ghost Town: New England
Robert Frost, The Poetry of Robert Frost
The prescribed poems are:
* The Tuft of Flowers
* Mending Wall
* Home Burial
* After Apple-Picking
* Fire and Ice
* Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
Robert Gray, Coast Road
The prescribed poems are:
* Journey: the North Coast
* The Meatworks
* North Coast Town
* Late Ferry
* Flames and Dangling Wire
* Diptych

Media

Simon Nasht, Frank Hurley The Man Who Made History

Ivan OMahoney
* Go Back to Where You Came From
Series 1: Episodes 1, 2 and 3
and
* The Response
End of paper
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2016 Board of Studies, Teaching and Educational Standards NSW