In this article, the Matrix English team shares their 2023 HSC English Advanced Exam Paper 1 sample answers. Use these responses as a guide to see what would score highly for the 2023 HSC English Advanced Exam Paper 1.
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The Matrix 2023 HSC English Advanced Exam Paper 1 Sample Answers for the English Advanced Common Module are here!
Looking for other HSC English Advanced solutions? Find them, here.
Kicking off the HSC exam is the 2023 HSC English Advanced Exam Paper 1.
In this article, we share our sample answers for Section 1 of the 2023 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 2023 unseen section questions.
Text 1 – Prose Extract
Why does Dank prefer ‘that gravel and dust comfort, away from that other place’?
Dank prefers the “gravel and dust” of “[her] place” over the jarring experience of sinking her toes into the unfamiliar “grains of sand” on the beach. In fact, Dank rejects the “strangeness of an unfamiliar terrain” which heightens her feelings of not belonging to this Saltwater Country. By contrasting this “gravel and dust” against the sand, “shells and seaweed”, Dank highlights the “discordant” experience of being a Gudanji woman standing on Country that’s not her own. Dank’s initial mix of tactile and aural imagery of “rubbing…those grains of sand” which “made dry, almost humming noises” creates a confusing sense of synaesthesia. This synaesthetic, and thus “grinding” experience causes her to prefer the “gravel and dust” of her own Country, and furthermore, to “tread wisely” on “that other place”.
Text 2 – Memoir Extract
Analyse Langbroek’s representation of the emotional impact of new places.
Langbroek’s memoir on travelling to Italy represents the pleasantly surprising impact of experiencing a new place that exceeds your expectations. Throughout the extract, Langbroek’s extended metaphor of an Italian summer compares the emotional impact of a new place to the feeling of meeting a new romantic interest, full of anticipation and “magical…possibility’. Here, her simile of “falling in love with a country” being like “falling in love with a person” instils in Langbroek the start of memories that are bathed in “golden light”. These memories have the deep emotional impact of already feeling nostalgic while still being experienced, where Langbroek’s series of cumulative listing (from “afternoon slumbers and wine” to “summer fruits…and romance”) emphasise just how pleasantly surprising it is to experience Italy as a ‘new’ place.
Text 3 – Feature article extract
How does Hamblin expand the reader’s understanding of the paradoxes of consumerism?
In Buy Experiences, Not Things, writer James Hamblin highlights the paradoxes of consumerism by arguing how we can buy happiness. However, this happiness can only be uncovered in “experiential” rather than “tangible” purchases that sit “right there in front of you”. In critiquing our tendency to buy things we simply do not need, Hamblin constructs logos to encourage the reader to invest in immaterial and “experiential purchases” instead of physical items that “deteriorate”. Hamblin employs quotes synthesised from psychological journal articles, giving weight to his argument by quoting a “Cornell doctoral candidate” to prove that spending our money on “trips, concerts, movies, et cetera” induces more happiness than “phones, clothes, couches, et cetera”. Here, the repetitive structure of Hamblin’s cumulative listing contrasts the enduring happiness of experiences against the paradoxically fleeting nature of tangible items. His psychological jargon of “hedonic adaptation” expands Hamblin’s use of logos to rhetorically justify this consumerist paradox, ultimately convincing the reader to invest in experiences, not things.
Text 4 – Nonfiction – Opinion Piece
How does Robertson challenge the trend towards ‘self-narrativisation’ in modern culture?
Writer Eleanor Robertson challenges our modern culture’s trend towards “self-narrativisation” by mocking it as a collective experience of self-obsession. Robertson maintains an ironic tone throughout the opinion piece, by equating stories about “overcoming adversity” with sob stories. Her sustained irony is subtle at first, hidden behind a series of literary jargon and metalanguage (“self-narrativisation”, “monomyth”, and “cathartic denouement”), before showing its explicit mocking by ironically subverting the “slaying the dragon” cliché. She further mocks our “social habitus’” narcissistic narratives by contrasting the sophisticated jargon of “discourse” against the low-brow simile of “pigeon poop on public furniture”. Robertson drives home her explicitly mocking challenge of the modern culture’s rampant “self-narrativisation” with two sets of anaphora. The first with the scathing mockery of “my [insert adversity] journey”, and the second with “their [insert people’s feelings] are boring”. This parallel repeat of sarcastic anaphora challenges self-narrativisation by trivialising the very language of our personal ‘journeys’, leading Robertson to conclude that a better world is one “where the word ‘journey’ is banned”.
Text 5 – Poem – Photograph
Analyse how O’Sullivan captures the idea of being in the moment.
The poem Being Here captures the wonderful emotional “weightlessness” of being in the moment by creating a vivid snapshot of the persona by an apricot tree. The “laden apricot tree” and its accompanying “glut of bees” become motifs for the symbolic wonder of the present moment where touch, taste, and sound converge. The tactile imagery of the apricots’ “fuzzed globes” near the aural imagery of apricots “rustl[ing] and plump[ing]” into “the plastic bag that you hold” lead to the joyous moment where the persona and their companion “try one”. The wonderfully ephemeral moments of this apricot-picking scene play on the reader’s senses, where the present act of “bit[ing] into” the apricot is deeply synaesthetic – “its taste is the taste of the colour”. Apart from constantly playing with sensory imagery throughout the poem, O’Sullivan’s consistent enjambment of every single line creates a rushed feeling, as if all of the tastes, sights, and sounds are occurring simultaneously. Ultimately, the central image of the apricot is one that combines all the reader’s senses to emphasise not only the rapid passing of present moments, but the emotional joys and lasting memories of these visceral experiences.
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.
