Paper 1 Discussion/Suggested Solutions

[bowiemily]

HERE IS THE EXAM!


SHORT ANSWER

Click Here

One of the stranger mark allocations I've seen in a HSC Paper. However, I've seen it in many Trial papers, so it's not too problematic. *REMEMBER* these are not the exact answers, this is just what I would have written

Text One, Question A
Concepts you may have used:
- The delight of discovery is founded within it's ability to be reinterpreted over time
- The delight of discovery nestles within childhood curiosity
- The naivety of childhood allows the delight of discovery to flourish
- The delight of discovery is grounded within it's simplicity

Techniques:
- 'eight years old' past tense --> conveys how delight may be founded in reconsidering memories/past experiences
- truncated sentences --> mimics how discovery and memory are intertwined
- enjambment --> delight is founded in the consecutive, yet nonetheless interlinked discoveries of the persona
- imagery (for basically any line in the poem) --> the sheer pleasure, and thus delight, conjured by the experience of discovery

Text Two, Novel Extract  -> LOVE that has asked you to talk about the reader. This means you must have explicit reference to them somewhere in your answer
Concepts:
- The journey of discovery is undertaken when our surmised knowledge of the world is challenged
- The journey of discovery is fundamentally made of changing perceptions and the world around us
- The medium of text is vital to the expression and understanding of the process of discovery

Techniques:
-'leisure, light, literature: true happiness': (what a beautiful quote) --> alliteration. Captures the readers attention and thus draws them into the journey of discovery
-rhyming couplet: draws final attention to the character, the proprietor. Centralises him within the experience of discovery, and ultimately highlights, that it is the individual (be they the reader of author) that controls the journey of discovery

Text Three - Non Fiction Extract - Once again, this requires that you acknowledge the authors agency explicitly. That may have looked something like this:

The writer cleverly employs *technique* within the line *quote* to emphasise the role of speculation in...

Also important to note that I thought this was a very very stupid ridiculous, weird text to include. I emphasise, you don't need to understand what the hell is going on, you just need to answer the question


Concepts:
- Though one may speculate upon the outcomes of an experience, true discovery lies within the unexpected, the unprepared. Therefore, speculation plays little role in the impact of discovery.
- The speculation that underlies one's preconceptions of a discovery founds it's very importance

Techniques:
- Juxtaposition between text and image (and yes, you could use the image as a point of analysis!!): signifies how it is one's own speculation and imagination that creates the significance of a place, and in turn, the significance of a discovery
- Stream of conscious created through caesura (excessive commas): highlights the persona's own speculations/mediations on the importance of the place
- elipses '...' --> in ending on this point, perhaps the author suggests that discovery, and its meaning, is nothing but speculation. Would be very interested to hear if anyone argued this point

6 Marker

Ahh the mini essay. The most interesting part of this is 'justify'. This means that you need to be highly evaluative/argumentative in this answer. This means I would have started the mini essay off like this:

Unexpected discoveries can be intensely meaningful as they most strongly challenge our sense of self and our perceptions of the world around us. This is most successfully explored in Texts One and Two

Now for me, I just wouldn't have touched text three because I thought it was v weird. You're never going to have marks taken off you for doing an 'easier text'. No matter what two texts you picked, your marks are going to be determined by your ability to 'justify' why they convey the unexpected nature of discovery, and how they qualify it's intense meaning.

My mini essay probably would have looked something like this:

- First Paragraph: Focussed on challenging sense of self
- Imagery dominates the majority of the poem. In this way, the persona loses sense of herself, gives herself purely to the experience/environment that surrounds her.
- Unexpected discovery: 'they remember my birthday'. Use of the exclusive, third person pronoun highlights just how lost this sense of self has become. (ie. she has to be reminded of her own birthday). The collective, the surroundings seem more determinative and more important.
- We may imply that through looking back on her childhood memories, (indicated by the past tense), the author better understands how she formed her sense of self as dependent on the world that surrounded her. This is significant for the audience's own understanding of self, and how it relates to the surrounding world.

- Paragraph Two: Perceptions of world around us
- Title - 'to be'. Captures the reader's intrigue. Unexpected analysis/pun of a commonly used phrase/auxiliary verb.
- Rhetorical question: 'how many people in the not too distant future will be left who understand what bookshops and booksellers used to meant to people like me?' -- suggests that 'to be' is transient. The world around us is contingent
- 'he who first discovers, he who finds- - anaphora. Suggests that 'to be' is ultimately defined by the individual. Reader is exposed to the transient and subjective nature of language. Significant to how they approach and appreciate the worth of not only this text, but texts that they read in the future.

CREATIVE

Click Here

Well. This will be a talking point.
'Complex nature' --> nice one NESA. This means that you can pretty much talk about anything that you want. As long as you didn't write 'and then she discovered...', you will have fulfilled this criteria.

BUT, the use of the phrase 'central idea'. Here's what I think it means:
- One of these excerpts needs to be tied to the central message you're trying to communicate about discovery. Lets go through these stimulus by stimulus
1. Will work if your central idea resembled: discovery is unending,  discovery is grounded in the everyday, discovery is about reconsidering what is known, a discovery may be simple; but it's consequences are complicated.

2.  "  ": Discovery is fallible, discovery is misleading, discovery is unfruitful, discovery is not transformative (how bleak).

3. "  ": Okay this is really weird. It seems to suggest that a discovery may be latent. Which means, it can exist without one recognising it does. In other words, that the potential to discover is just as important as the very notion of discovery itself. This is highly, highly interesting. I probably would have used this for my own creative (which is published in the ATARNotes Advanced books). I would be really interested to see how people interpreted this one!

Now, you did not have to actually include this excerpt in your creative. I however, would have included some of the key words from whichever one I picked in mine. So, if I were to use the third stimulus, I would have chucked in words like 'uncomprehended (which I'm not certain is even a word), unnoticed' in there.

Overall, I think this probably the most achievable part of an otherwise brutal paper. Let me know what you think!

ESSAY

Click Here!

phew, we've avoided the threat of two related texts again

I think this is a very loaded question. By that I mean that it gave you ALOT of ground to cover. I think this is on trend with NESA trying to discourage wrote learning essays. This is what I think you would have had to do to achieve an A-Range response:

a) argued that this statement is highly accurate, and in turn, argued that all stimuluses (eg. need, wonder and curiosity) will have an equal influence on founding the transformative aspect of discovery. This means potentially spending a paragraph on need, wonder and curiosity separately each, whilst also linking each to the transformative impact of discovery

b) argued that whilst need, wonder and curiosity are all important, it is their combined effect that forms discovery's transformative power. Thus this statement is partially accurate. I would then spend each paragraph linking each theme (ie. first para on need + wonder, second on wonder + curiosity etc).

c) argued that one takes predominance over another. This would be highly difficult, because you still need to talk about all three in your text. This means that in order to argue this point you would have to highlight silences in your text. This is really extension material, rather than advanced. If you were able to do so, props to you!!


Now, I also think that you would also have to specify exactly what it is that discovery is 'transforming'. This would be specific for your text. For 'Wrack', I probably would have said something like this in my analysis:

'Discoveries motivated by need often highlight the futility of this stimulus. Need within Wrack is exposed as a highly subjective, tempestuous and selfish motivation (insert quote). Upon realisation of such, therefore, the character's perspective of themselves and their 'needs' transforms.'

As you can see, theres a lot of ground to cover in this essay. Keen to hear what you thought!

What did you think? Register for a free account to share your thoughts below!

[bowiemily]

Short Answers - Part One

One of the stranger mark allocations I've seen in a HSC Paper. However, I've seen it in many Trial papers, so it's not too problematic. *REMEMBER* these are not the exact answers, this is just what I would have written

Text One, Question A
Concepts you may have used:
- The delight of discovery is founded within it's ability to be reinterpreted over time
- The delight of discovery nestles within childhood curiosity
- The naivety of childhood allows the delight of discovery to flourish
- The delight of discovery is grounded within it's simplicity

Techniques:
- 'eight years old' past tense --> conveys how delight may be founded in reconsidering memories/past experiences
- truncated sentences --> mimics how discovery and memory are intertwined
- enjambment --> delight is founded in the consecutive, yet nonetheless interlinked discoveries of the persona
- imagery (for basically any line in the poem) --> the sheer pleasure, and thus delight, conjured by the experience of discovery

Text Two, Novel Extract  -> LOVE that has asked you to talk about the reader. This means you must have explicit reference to them somewhere in your answer
Concepts:
- The journey of discovery is undertaken when our surmised knowledge of the world is challenged
- The journey of discovery is fundamentally made of changing perceptions and the world around us
- The medium of text is vital to the expression and understanding of the process of discovery

Techniques:
-'leisure, light, literature: true happiness': (what a beautiful quote) --> alliteration. Captures the readers attention and thus draws them into the journey of discovery
-rhyming couplet: draws final attention to the character, the proprietor. Centralises him within the experience of discovery, and ultimately highlights, that it is the individual (be they the reader of author) that controls the journey of discovery

[bowiemily]

Short Answers - Part Two

Text Three - Non Fiction Extract - Once again, this requires that you acknowledge the authors agency explicitly. That may have looked something like this:

The writer cleverly employs *technique* within the line *quote* to emphasise the role of speculation in...

Also important to note that I thought this was a very very stupid ridiculous, weird text to include. I emphasise, you don't need to understand what the hell is going on, you just need to answer the question


Concepts:
- Though one may speculate upon the outcomes of an experience, true discovery lies within the unexpected, the unprepared. Therefore, speculation plays little role in the impact of discovery.
- The speculation that underlies one's preconceptions of a discovery founds it's very importance

Techniques:
- Juxtaposition between text and image (and yes, you could use the image as a point of analysis!!): signifies how it is one's own speculation and imagination that creates the significance of a place, and in turn, the significance of a discovery
- Stream of conscious created through caesura (excessive commas): highlights the persona's own speculations/mediations on the importance of the place
- elipses '...' --> in ending on this point, perhaps the author suggests that discovery, and its meaning, is nothing but speculation. Would be very interested to hear if anyone argued this point

[bowiemily]

Short Answers - Part Three

Ahh the mini essay. The most interesting part of this is 'justify'. This means that you need to be highly evaluative/argumentative in this answer. This means I would have started the mini essay off like this:

Unexpected discoveries can be intensely meaningful as they most strongly challenge our sense of self and our perceptions of the world around us. This is most successfully explored in Texts One and Two

Now for me, I just wouldn't have touched text three because I thought it was v weird. You're never going to have marks taken off you for doing an 'easier text'. No matter what two texts you picked, your marks are going to be determined by your ability to 'justify' why they convey the unexpected nature of discovery, and how they qualify it's intense meaning.

My mini essay probably would have looked something like this:

- First Paragraph: Focussed on challenging sense of self
- Imagery dominates the majority of the poem. In this way, the persona loses sense of herself, gives herself purely to the experience/environment that surrounds her.
- Unexpected discovery: 'they remember my birthday'. Use of the exclusive, third person pronoun highlights just how lost this sense of self has become. (ie. she has to be reminded of her own birthday). The collective, the surroundings seem more determinative and more important.
- We may imply that through looking back on her childhood memories, (indicated by the past tense), the author better understands how she formed her sense of self as dependent on the world that surrounded her. This is significant for the audience's own understanding of self, and how it relates to the surrounding world.

- Paragraph Two: Perceptions of world around us
- Title - 'to be'. Captures the reader's intrigue. Unexpected analysis/pun of a commonly used phrase/auxiliary verb.
- Rhetorical question: 'how many people in the not too distant future will be left who understand what bookshops and booksellers used to meant to people like me?' -- suggests that 'to be' is transient. The world around us is contingent
- 'he who first discovers, he who finds- - anaphora. Suggests that 'to be' is ultimately defined by the individual. Reader is exposed to the transient and subjective nature of language. Significant to how they approach and appreciate the worth of not only this text, but texts that they read in the future.

[elysepopplewell]

A word on the unseen texts: Emily and I both agree that these are quite challenging. In fact, very challenging. Text three is just ~weird~ in a lot of ways. This paper is not impossible, but if you're feeling like you struggled with it, you are not alone!

Props to everyone for making it through, this was a very tricky Section One!

[bowiemily]

Creative

Well. This will be a talking point.
'Complex nature' --> nice one NESA. This means that you can pretty much talk about anything that you want. As long as you didn't write 'and then she discovered...', you will have fulfilled this criteria.

BUT, the use of the phrase 'central idea'. Here's what I think it means:
- One of these excerpts needs to be tied to the central message you're trying to communicate about discovery. Lets go through these stimulus by stimulus
1. Will work if your central idea resembled: discovery is unending,  discovery is grounded in the everyday, discovery is about reconsidering what is known, a discovery may be simple; but it's consequences are complicated.

2.  "  ": Discovery is fallible, discovery is misleading, discovery is unfruitful, discovery is not transformative (how bleak).

3. "  ": Okay this is really weird. It seems to suggest that a discovery may be latent. Which means, it can exist without one recognising it does. In other words, that the potential to discover is just as important as the very notion of discovery itself. This is highly, highly interesting. I probably would have used this for my own creative (which is published in the ATARNotes Advanced books). I would be really interested to see how people interpreted this one!

Now, you did not have to actually include this excerpt in your creative. I however, would have included some of the key words from whichever one I picked in mine. So, if I were to use the third stimulus, I would have chucked in words like 'uncomprehended (which I'm not certain is even a word), unnoticed' in there.

Overall, I think this probably the most achievable part of an otherwise brutal paper. Let me know what you think!

[_____]

Section I - easy apart from 6 marker, not really enough to discuss in text 1/3 I felt.

Section II - pretty hard but I got incredibly lucky with the first statement.

Section III - relatively easy but didn't write much.

Did most people find this a hard paper?

[bowiemily]

Essay Question

phew, we've avoided the threat of two related texts again

I think this is a very loaded question. By that I mean that it gave you ALOT of ground to cover. I think this is on trend with NESA trying to discourage wrote learning essays. This is what I think you would have had to do to achieve an A-Range response:

a) argued that this statement is highly accurate, and in turn, argued that all stimuluses (eg. need, wonder and curiosity) will have an equal influence on founding the transformative aspect of discovery. This means potentially spending a paragraph on need, wonder and curiosity separately each, whilst also linking each to the transformative impact of discovery

b) argued that whilst need, wonder and curiosity are all important, it is their combined effect that forms discovery's transformative power. Thus this statement is partially accurate. I would then spend each paragraph linking each theme (ie. first para on need + wonder, second on wonder + curiosity etc).

c) argued that one takes predominance over another. This would be highly difficult, because you still need to talk about all three in your text. This means that in order to argue this point you would have to highlight silences in your text. This is really extension material, rather than advanced. If you were able to do so, props to you!!


Now, I also think that you would also have to specify exactly what it is that discovery is 'transforming'. This would be specific for your text. For 'Wrack', I probably would have said something like this in my analysis:

'Discoveries motivated by need often highlight the futility of this stimulus. Need within Wrack is exposed as a highly subjective, tempestuous and selfish motivation (insert quote). Upon realisation of such, therefore, the character's perspective of themselves and their 'needs' transforms.'

As you can see, theres a lot of ground to cover in this essay. Keen to hear what you thought!

[dancing phalanges]

I personally was pleasantly surprised at how easy that exam was! Hopefully all of these I used are correct and I don't make a fool of myself with that opening statement aha:
For the poem I used the auditory imagery of "slapping water" which highlights the active enjoyment and delight found in discovering the joys of childhood.
For the second text, the techniques I used were:
Metaphor of "thousands of silent observers on wooden shelves" creates a mysterious and uncertain tone for the reader and expresses the vastness of the discovery of the book shop
The journey from this initial uncertainty to then discovering the pleasure and joy of the bookshop, as emphasised through the ellipsis (does it matter if I spelt it elipsis haha) "...leisure, light, literature: true happiness."
Then to end the journey I used the ellipsis again: "torn, yellowed, forgotten, rediscovered..." to highlight the journey from lost/not valued as indicated in torn and yellowed to treasured and rediscovered worth, with the ellipsis at the end highlighting that the journey of discovering these hidden treasures is ongoing and the reader can still contribute.
Third text, I had no idea you could also analyse the image! But, nonetheless, I used:
1. firstly the title "Where? What? Where?" to highlight the role of questioning/speculation in prompting discoveries
2. the caesura of "you'll never walk alone, they seemed to be saying -- or more accurately, you'll never even walk..." to highlight how he constantly speculates the nature of the discovery, taking time to question it
3. the uncertain tone as created in the brackets "a hundred years from now (or a thousand, let's say, to be on the safe side...)
4. and the ellipsis at the end "come back to puzzle the significance of this place..." highlighting that the discovery is not finished/certain and that future speculations of the discovery will be made
For the comparison I used Texts 2 and 3 as I felt Text 1 was harder to demonstrate the unexpected nature of discovery.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
For the creative - Elyse will remember my story. I used the last stimulus piece in terms of in the intro I wrote something along the lines of (in bold the changes):
The streets surrounding Darlinghurst Road, Kings Cross were encapsulated by the scent of thyme-filled turkey sizzling on aluminium foil and dazzling hues of green and red. Moderately sheltered, a mother laid in a silent embrace with her only daughter, Grace. A windswept sleeping bag, their only security from the sodden concrete beneath. I put in here something like: People who walked by would notice that something had happened here.
 The lone sleeping bag propped up against the damp alley wall exuded a sense of despair, as if something, or someone was missing. (I went on a bit more but can't rememeber haha) In spite of the fear and squalor of her new life, Grace’s innocent exuberance shone brighter than any of the surrounding estates, splendidly adorned with ornamental lights. Samantha, however, was the image of a mother weathered by shame. Skin hidden behind layers of grime, and hair hung as a tangled mop over sunken eyes. Faded photos clutched between calloused fingers, her only remaining memory of Grace’s lost childhood, and of her father that Grace barely knew. Yet, Samantha had made a promise to her daughter – a promise to deliver her Christmas wish. I then basically in the end of this para and throughout the middle of the story used the uncertainty of this stimulus and the people's sense that something happened to refer to the death of the father and how there was an air of regret and loneliness etc.
Then at the end of my story, I used the sleeping bag as a sort of motif after the daughter discovered the truth about her father and recognised he was gone and felt closer to her mother as a result:
The following night, as they usually would, the pair took shelter in their still windswept sleeping bag. Yet, this time, when people walked by, they were conscious something had happened, something had changed. The sleeping bag seemed to ooze a sense of warmth, as if that same missing person had finally been found. Inside, Grace and Samantha laid, closer to each other than before. The grainy photographs now were grasped between Grace's hardened hands, the only remaining memory of her father that she misses so dearly. Every Christmas, Grace would decorate her little gem of hope with the photographs. A sign that her father had also found his way home.   -  Something like that
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Then for the essay, I simply went
MOTIVATED BY NEED - Gray's need to return to his hometown and rediscover his roots and identity in Journey the North Coast leading to a transformative understanding of himself.
MOTIVATED BY WONDER - The narrator's wonder (in Late Ferry) for the alluring lights of urbanisation in Sydney Harbour. Yet, as a result of his wonder, he discovers that the lights are spiritually empty and thus gains a deeper understanding of himself by instead finding peace in the simplicity of life (the darkness).
MOTIVATED BY CURIOSITY - In The Boys in the Island, the main character Francis travels to the mainland due to his curiosity to explore the unknown world of adulthood. However, as a result, he instead uncovers the corruption of this new life and is forced to reconsider the fulfillment of his life in Tasmania, thus leading to a more transformative perception of his own place in the world.

AND THERE YOU GO! Happy to get that all written down for future reference, and happy to hear any feedback Hope it was as good for everyone else!

[daniel044]

Creative


Well. This will be a talking point.
'Complex nature' --> nice one NESA. This means that you can pretty much talk about anything that you want. As long as you didn't write 'and then she discovered...', you will have fulfilled this criteria.

BUT, the use of the phrase 'central idea'. Here's what I think it means:
- One of these excerpts needs to be tied to the central message you're trying to communicate about discovery. Lets go through these stimulus by stimulus
1. Will work if your central idea resembled: discovery is unending,  discovery is grounded in the everyday, discovery is about reconsidering what is known, a discovery may be simple; but it's consequences are complicated.

2.  "  ": Discovery is fallible, discovery is misleading, discovery is unfruitful, discovery is not transformative (how bleak).

3. "  ": Okay this is really weird. It seems to suggest that a discovery may be latent. Which means, it can exist without one recognising it does. In other words, that the potential to discover is just as important as the very notion of discovery itself. This is highly, highly interesting. I probably would have used this for my own creative (which is published in the ATARNotes Advanced books). I would be really interested to see how people interpreted this one!

Now, you did not have to actually include this excerpt in your creative. I however, would have included some of the key words from whichever one I picked in mine. So, if I were to use the third stimulus, I would have chucked in words like 'uncomprehended (which I'm not certain is even a word), unnoticed' in there.

Overall, I think this probably the most achievable part of an otherwise brutal paper. Let me know what you think!

I used the third phrase, as would you, as you said. But i used it to emphasize the importance of place to somebody's discover. I had my protaginist about to leave the place where he had his discovery and then said that phrase, showing how important the place was to him now. I hope i did that right ahah, but otherwise I didn't really like that paper, especially section 1 😬😬

[bowiemily]

Section I - easy apart from 6 marker, not really enough to discuss in text 1/3 I felt.

Section II - pretty hard but I got incredibly lucky with the first statement.

Section III - relatively easy but didn't write much.

Did most people find this a hard paper?

I think is was super hard. By the sounds of it though, you did well!! Its also important to remember that your marks will be scaled according to the difficulty of the paper at the marking centre - so don't be too stressed if you felt worse coming out of this paper than your trials!

[bowiemily]

I used the third phrase, as would you, as you said. But i used it to emphasize the importance of place to somebody's discover. I had my protaginist about to leave the place where he had his discovery and then said that phrase, showing how important the place was to him now. I hope i did that right ahah, but otherwise I didn't really like that paper, especially section 1 😬😬

Yeah that sounds like a great way to interpret it! So you basically positioned your protagonist as the person speaking that third quote? (if that makes any sense)

[bowiemily]

Also, if literally anyone wants to come talk to me about the paper, I'm at level 9 of Fisher Library at the University of Sydney. Sitting in a green cardigan. I'll be able to talk for the next half an hour or so. Here for you guys if you need it!!

[spragg_j]

For the essay I focused more on the power of discoveries to transform with my paras being:

1) the initial mindset and motivation for discovery influencing the discovery process regardless of the motivation
2) the confronting nature of discovery challenging the initial mindset regardless of the motivation, hence acting as a catalyst for transformation
3) the transformation as a result of the new understanding and thus the power of discovery to transform how we view others and the world around us.

So I didn't deeply focus on motivation, only mentioned the necessity, curiosity in the first para and then highlighted in the other paras that despite these different motivations the discovery was still transformative.

would that have been ok? or did you need to base your essay around the motivations more like the structure you mentioned? (my text was Go Back)

[TheFreeMarketeer]

This is where I get worried. For the essay, I said while those types of discoveries are in fact transformative to a degree, the most profound is the nature of the unexpected discovery due to its unforeseen essence and its provocation of the human capacity, whereby the response to it is the most telling insight of its transformative capacity.

It seems I went a little far-fetched.