Support for New HSC Syllabus

I am using this blog to provide resources to support my daughter and her school peers in the new HSC syllabus. I had previously used it for a Syntopical Bookgroup I ran, and you can find some older posts about reading and writing (from 2010!).

I will include the syllabus and sample outlines for the Preliminary course:
- Reading to Write
- Narratives that Shape our World
- Contemporary Possibilities
- Close Study of Texts
- Critical Study of Texts.

I will then provide resources for the Year 12 course.

I will include my own resources to support engagement with texts and understanding the core principles of studying literature. 

The core principles of studying literature, which I will cover in more depth, include the following:

- Sounds are important.
- Moving from oral memory devices to literacy gave us our literary devices. The aim is to be memorable.
- Literary devices are often based upon patterns - repetitions, parallel constructions.
- The use of comparisons - figurative devices, allusions etc (so we can imagine according to the familiar).
- We aim to make meaning from everything (we are storytelling animals) imagining that nature or the gods have an attitude to us (they don't).
- All good writing aims to be onomatopoeia or autological (to create what it is describing - to be the effect).
- It is important to increase your metalanguage and be able to categorise your metalanguage.

In subject English you can bring everything you know and are interested in: history, geography, politics, philosophy, psychology, sport, art, music, languages, science. In this subject teachers want you to personally engage, which means you can make your own arguments, so long as your presentation is logical and supported by evidence in the text.

If you study at a more advanced level you also need to know about literary movements, and how texts have been received over time (Reception Studies) and how they have been valued, or not valued and why.

I can provide some activities and recommended readings. I am writing a book as a resource for high school English (it is an ambitious project), and these blog posts are a simple version of some material I have been preparing for the book. (The book covers ancient literature, etymology and provides modern examples of literary devises using relevant messages for today.)

More to come!