2023 HSC English Advanced Short Answer Solutions

English Advanced:

Congratulations on acing the 2023 HSC English Advanced exams! Your hard work and dedication have truly paid off, and we are thrilled to see your success. Now that you’re finished, let’s compare notes and see how you did. 

We have provided sample answers to English Advanced short response questions so you can get a head start for next year. These examples are designed to help you identify areas where you can further improve and excel.

Question 1 (3 MARKS)

Text 1 – Prose Extract – We Come With This Place by Debra Dank

This question asked why Dank preferred “that gravel and dust comfort, away from that other place?”

• Your response should identify why the individual prefers their home over the unfamiliar landscape of the beach. 
• It should then analyse succinctly two examples from the prose extract.

SAMPLE ANSWER: 

“We Come With This Place” explores how a physically and spiritually unfamiliar landscape can be uncomfortable and overwhelming in contrast to one’s home. Visiting the ocean for the first time, Dank illustrates with auditory imagery how the unfamiliar environment “made dry, almost humming noises that were strange in my ears.” The uncomfortable feelings that arise when the individual does not know a place physically but also spiritually, is conveyed by their references to their heart and soul, “its noise became grinding reverberations, discordant* with the rhythm of my goodalu** and of my kujiga.” The negative connotations of “grinding” and “discordant” emphasise how they do not understand this new landscape as it is not connected to them. Thus they prefer the “gravel and dust”, the tactile imagery representing their familiar desert home. 

Other answers could include: 

• The value of home as the persona can understand it fully through the power of cultural stories 
• The changing relationship with a new landscape but home always remaining a constant comfort 

Question 2 (4 MARKS)

Text 2 – Memoir Extract – Ciao Bella! By Kate Langbroek

This question asked students to analyse the text’s representation of the emotional impact of new places.

• Your response should identify what the “emotional impact” of the new place is and how it has affected the individual. 
• You should then succinctly analyse three examples from the memoir. 

SAMPLE ANSWER: 

Langbroek’s memoir illuminates the power of a country to evoke lasting positive feelings in an individual, not only about the place but also about themselves. With high modality language, “We have no idea of the way in which it will open up to us, and us to it”, Langbroek explores how each destination will have a different impact on the individual that cannot preempted, heightening its power, however emphasising through the collective pronoun “we” how everyone can be changed by experience of a new place. The personal experience the author captures is falling in love with Italy; “Falling in love with a country is like falling in love with a person.” Through the simile that is extended by references to “a few dates” and “dinner”, the persona captures the feelings of excitement and newness that the new destination of Italy conjured for her. She extends this by illuminating that the impact of new places is a shift in self perception, that falling in love (with a country or person) “is about how they make you feel about yourself.” Thus with the direct address of “you”, Langbroek makes her personal experience relatable to all audience members, reminding us that new places can fill us with excitement and shift our self perception. 

Other answers could include: 

• The excitement of a new destination despite the seeming cliches of it 
• The unexpected nature of emotion evoked by a new place 

Question 3 (4 MARKS)

Text 3 – Feature Article Extract – Buy Experiences, Not Things by James Hamblin

This question asked students how the author expands the reader’s understanding of the paradoxes of consumerism.

• Your response should identify what the paradoxes are and how the author unpacks them
• You should then succinctly analyse three examples from the feature article. 

SAMPLE ANSWER:

The feature article exposes how consumerism has established a paradoxical relationship between what we buy and the happiness it provides us. Hamblin elucidates that experiences, counter to common logic, are more conducive to happiness through referencing expert Amit Kumar who states experiences provide “more enduring happiness”. This reference establishes credibility and supports an idea counter to consumerism’s main claim: that buying things will result in contentment. Hamblin expands on this, “Actually most of us have a pretty intense capacity for tolerance, or hedonic adaptation*”. With collective pronouns, he illustrates the collective experience of how material things, “Phones, clothes, couches,” become normalised and thus less exciting, supporting this claim with the jargon of “hedonic adaptation” that gives it scientific merit. In contrast, the changeability of experiential moments,“Even a bad experience becomes a good story”, juxtaposition of “bad” and “good” emphasising how over time an experiential moment can become satisfying, reveals the paradox that although something does not last ‘forever’ it can provide more sustained enjoyment. Thus, Hamblin counters the cultural paradigm that consumerism pushes, by revealing the anomaly that material things do not provide the greatest happiness. 

Other answers could include: 

• The paradox that consumerism purports to want our happiness but is a system designed to have us wanting more 
• The importance of time and transience that influences our enjoyment counter to consumerism 

Question 4 (4 MARKS)

Text 4 – Nonfiction – opinion piece by Eleanor Robertson

This question asked how the author challenged the trend towards ‘self-narrativisation’ in modern culture.

• Your response should identify what the feature article describes as “self narrativisation” and what issue they take with it, including the emotions they feel towards it
• You should then succinctly analyse three examples from the text 

SAMPLE ANSWER: 

Robertson’s opinion piece takes umbrage with the notion of ‘self-narrativisation’, asserting that most human lives are not profoundly interesting, and are more connected and communal than one individual’s story. Robertson criticises the notion of individuals being “the hero of their own monomyth”, employing an extended metaphor to describe how contemporary culture demands that individuals always be facing solo challenges and hardship, “slaying all the dragons standing between them and success.” This emphasises the trend towards individualism and an unfounded notion that everyone’s story should be as interesting as a fantasy adventure. Robertson identifies this cultural shift with the ubiquitous phrase “My Journey”, with a satirical tone she lists: “My interior-decorating journey. My reactive-dog journey. My sciatica journey,” she emphasises the point that “journey” gives weight to things that are inconsequential and “boring”. With a sarcastic tone, Robertson highlights the absurdity of everything being fit into the simple structure of this journey and challenge, “ I am embarking on a journey to ban the word ‘journey.’ Yes, it will be difficult…”, emphasising to readers that perhaps “self narrativism” has gone one step too far. 

Other answers could include: 

• How describing unique experiences in a generalised way eradicates care and interest 
• How reality tv as a mechanism of storytelling in modern culture is playing a part in this trend 

Question 5 (5 MARKS)

Text 5 – Poem – Being here by Vincent O’Sullivan

This question asked students to analyse how the poet captured the idea of being in the moment.

• Your response should identify what moment is being described and why it is important
• You should then analyse four examples from the poem 

SAMPLE ANSWER

O’Sullivan transports readers into a warm, rich moment, emphasising the importance of being connected with the world’s sights and sounds for the creation of detailed memories. O’Sullivan captures an afternoon picking apricots and watching “bees / arcing and mining the soft decaying galaxies / of the laden apricot tree”, the metaphor of something so small becoming the enormity and detail of a galaxy illustrates how even the smallest things can be captivating and complex when brought attention to. O’Sullivan expounds that being in the moment is taking things as they are, “without wanting / symbols”, and accepting them as “being themselves, for themselves”. The repetition of “themselves” is an anomaly from the common formic feature of poetry to create symbols and hidden meanings from everyday things, O’Sullivan disrupting our constant need to create more meaning. With rich tactile imagery the poet captures the “warm furred almost weightlessness / of the fruit” and the joy of biting into an apricot, transporting the reader to a very simple and sensory pleasure. The poem expands on the value of being in the moment by conveying how a moment will in time become a memory, “and this / hour precisely, and memory I expect is storing / for an afternoon far removed from here”. Through the metaphor of “storing” the poet conveys how these rich experiences, when fully attended to, are committed richly to memory and drawn on in times of need. 

Other answers could include: 

• The idea of craving that the poet introduces as counter to being in the moment 
• The value of being present for relationships and this ‘you’ the persona is addressing

Don’t wait until the last minute to prepare for next year’s HSC English Advanced exam! Enrol to Dymocks Tutoring today and get the support you need to succeed.