HSC English Extension 1 past exams 2016–2025, by year and topic

The rest of the syllabus

Question-level mapping for these areas is still being verified. Every official paper covering them is in the year table above.

• Common Module: Literary Worlds — Individual and collective experience represented in literary worlds · Complexity, ambiguity and abstraction in literary texts · Response to stimulus/unseen text (imaginative and/or critical/reflective response) · Craft of writing — voice, form, language choices in original composition
• Elective: Literary Homelands — Connections to place, belonging and displacement · Ethnicity, culture and 'the other' · Diaspora, migration and cultural memory · Values, assumptions and the impact of one culture on another
• Elective: Worlds of Upheaval — Individuals and communities in periods of social/political upheaval · Struggles, aspirations and ideas during times of change · Texts as provocation for shifts in attitude and perspective · Representation of conflict, revolution or crisis
• Elective: Reimagined Worlds — Adaptation, appropriation and reworking of source texts · Reimagining of context, form or perspective across time · Intertextuality and dialogue between original and reimagined works · Purpose and effect of transformation on meaning
• Elective: Literary Mindscapes — Interior worlds — perception, thought, emotion and memory · Psychological and subjective representation of experience · Narrative techniques for rendering consciousness · Ambiguity and instability of the individual mind in texts
• Elective: Intersecting Worlds — Convergence of multiple perspectives, timelines or realities · Relationships between different worlds within a text or across texts · Structural and narrative techniques for intersection/juxtaposition · Meaning generated through connection and contrast of worlds
• Extension Response Craft — Textual integrity and coherence in original compositions · Sustained control of chosen form (imaginative, critical, reflective) · Use of related/unseen material in a sophisticated, integrated way · Reflection on own compositional choices and process