In this article, the Matrix English team shares their 2022 HSC English Advanced Exam Paper 1 sample answers. Use these responses as a guide to see what would score highly for the 2022 HSC English Advanced Exam Paper 1.
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The Matrix 2022 HSC English Advanced Exam Paper 1 Sample Answers for the English Advanced Common Module are here!
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Kicking off the HSC exam is the 2022 HSC English Advanced Exam Paper 1.
In this article, we share our sample answers for Section 1 of the 2022 HSC English Advanced Exam Paper 1 to show you the sort of response that would score highly. The paper will be released on the NESA website, here.
Read on to see sample responses for all of the 2022 unseen section questions.
Text 1 – Poem
In what ways does Azzam celebrate togetherness?
Azzam’s poem Nine Spice Mix celebrates the wonders of togetherness through the sensory experience of taste. The poem’s six stanzas come together to paint a holistic gustatory image of how the West and South Asian “Nine Spice Mix” make up a “unique union of nine”. Azzam furthers this togetherness of taste through consistent use of alliteration and sibilance. The personified spices “tango on the tongue”, while “stepping, stomping”, and “swaying”. Later, these same nine spices reinforce the feeling of transcendent togetherness by figuratively crossing “beyond borders and blockades”.
Text 2 – Prose fiction extract
Analyse how Fforde captures the narrator’s experience of awe and wonder.
The narrator’s visceral experience of walking through a library captures a striking sense of awe. The narrator’s wonder at how alive books seem is striking in Fforde’s initial allusion to a Turner painting. The simile here compares the mere existence of these books, which hyperbolically number in the “hundreds, thousands” and “millions”, to beautiful and culturally significant encapsulations of past moments. Upon the narrator’s approach, the metaphoric idea of these books feeling “warm to the touch” further suggests the books’ living nature. Fforde solidifies the narrator’s experience of awe and wonder with the aural imagery of the “distant hum”. Here, the cumulative listing of rumbling “machinery, people talking, traffic, seagulls… a blacksmith’s hammer” highlight just how wonderfully “alive” these books are.
Text 3 – Feature article extract
Explain how Gemmell explores the paradoxes of human behaviour in this extract.
The feature article “a line in the snow” affirms how paradoxical human behaviour can be – that humans are killers as well as nurturing preservers of life on earth. Gemmel opens her exploration of human intervention in Antarctica with the language of innocence, where she portrays both the continent itself and its fauna as “pure” and “fragile”. This innocent language, with its visual imagery of a “baby seal with its umbilical cord still attached”, is starkly contrasted against the “pesky, rapacious species” of “human”. However, it is in Antarctica’s untouched beauty that Gemmel finds humanity’s altruism. In fact, she uses the scientific curiosity attached to Antarctica as a metric for “human goodness” – the metaphorical “barometer”. Within the space of a couple paragraphs, she emphasises humans’ paradoxical identities, where the alliterated “plunderers, predators, polluters” appears alongside the heartfelt anecdote of her Antarctic team crawling “on [their] stomachs… out of respect”.
Text 4 – Memoir extract
Analyse how Saramago conveys the value of memory in this extract.
Saramago conveys just how important childhood memories are – that they construct personal identities in the present. Even though his grandparents’ home has quite literally “disappeared beneath a mound of rubble”, his memory of their home has not. Figuratively speaking, the author can “rebuild” this house and “replant” its accompanying garden at any time in his head. Saramago affirms that his present identity is constructed by having memories of this home, where the metaphor of the house being a “magical cocoon” shows how transformative these childhood memories are for his adult identity.
Text 5 – Nonfiction extract and Text 6 – Photograph
Compare how Falconer and Paine represent interactions between humans and the natural world?
Both Falconer’s nonfiction extract Sydney and Paine’s photograph Dust Storm Daisy paint a synchronised representation of interactions between humans and the natural world through colour. Both texts highlight the stark similarities in how human behaviours mirror the life cycles of the natural world by situating their audience in their colourful environments – Falconer with Sydney and Paine in his rural dust storm.
Falconer initially creates a colourful interaction between people and place that is rooted in the purple motif of the jacaranda tree. Here, the “jacaranda seedling” given to new mothers represents birth, and the “brown and rot[ting]” jacaranda flowers at the end of the extract represent death. Falconer furthers this motif with consistent purple imagery – the “bright mauve light”, the metaphorical “purple rain” on the streets of Elizabeth Bay, and the ill-fitting “ultraviolet” of an “introduced species”. For Falconer, the natural world also takes on a sense of agency, in that these transient trees “seed themselves in bush and gardens”, iterating how humans’ natural life cycles fit into the autonomous cycle of the natural world. Throughout the extract, the fleeting seasonal bloom of the jacaranda represents the short but beautiful cycle of life.
In a similar burst of colour, the photographer Paine constructs a purposeful interaction between people and place. However, distinct from Falconer, Dust Storm Daisy does so with red and earthy brown tones. The photo’s murky and dusty background emphasises the severity of the dust storm, to the point of obscuring the tree from view. Through this visual play on obscurity and clarity, Paine shows the viewer the way nature certainly takes on a mind of its own. Because of nature’s agency, Paine’s photo shows us that humans often interact with the natural world in a reactionary way. Furthermore, the focal point of a young girl wearing rusty red colours (much like the storm’s dusty colours) highlights just how much our human behaviours mirror our environment. The girl’s “costuming” of wearing goggles during this severe weather event represents humans’ ability to adapt. Much like Falconer’s writing, Paine’s photograph affirms how human behaviours are derived from the natural world.
Ultimately, both texts and their focus on the colours we find in nature explore how humans synchronise their behaviours in response to nature. Both Falconer and Paine affirm for us the similar ways in which the natural world reflects cycles of life from birth to death.
Written by Matrix English Team
The Matrix English Team are tutors and teachers with a passion for English and a dedication to seeing Matrix Students achieving their academic goals.
© Matrix Education and www.matrix.edu.au, 2023. Unauthorised use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Matrix Education and www.matrix.edu.au with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
