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Area of Study and Texts for the Common Content of Standard and Advanced Courses

The Area of Study must be considered in the context of the Area of Study description in the syllabus, course objectives, content and outcomes. (Reread English Stage 6 Syllabus, p 32 and pp 35–38; p 50 and pp 53–56).

Introduction to the Area of Study

In the Area of Study, students explore and examine relationships between language and text, and interrelationships among texts. They examine closely the individual qualities of texts while considering the texts’ relationships to the wider context of the Area of Study. They synthesise ideas to clarify meaning and develop new meanings. They take into account whether aspects such as context, purpose and register, text structures, stylistic features, grammatical features and vocabulary are appropriate to the particular text.

Area of Study: Belonging

This Area of Study requires students to explore the ways in which the concept of belonging is represented in and through texts.
Perceptions and ideas of belonging, or of not belonging, vary. These perceptions are shaped within personal, cultural, historical and social contexts. A sense of belonging can emerge from the connections made with people, places, groups, communities and the larger world. Within this Area of Study, students may consider aspects of belonging in terms of experiences and notions of identity, relationships, acceptance and understanding.

Texts explore many aspects of belonging, including the potential of the individual to enrich or challenge a community or group. They may reflect the way attitudes to belonging are modified over time. Texts may also represent choices not to belong, or barriers which prevent belonging.

Perceptions and ideas of belonging in texts can be constructed through a variety of language modes, forms, features and structures. In engaging with the text, a responder may experience and understand the possibilities presented by a sense of belonging to, or exclusion fromthe text and the world it represents. This engagement may be influenced by the different ways perspectives are given voice in or are absent from a text.

In their responses and compositions students examine, question, and reflect and speculate on:

how the concept of belonging is conveyed through the representations of people, relationships, ideas, places, events, and societies that they encounter in the prescribed text and texts of their own choosing related to the Area of Study
assumptions underlying various representations of the concept of belonging
how the composer’s choice of language modes, forms, features and structures shapes and is shaped by a sense of belonging
their own experiences of belonging, in a variety of contexts
the ways in which they perceive the world through texts
the ways in which exploring the concept and significance of belonging may broaden and deepen their understanding of themselves and their world.

Students explore the concept of belonging through at least one of the following:

Prose Fiction (pf) or Nonfiction (nf)

Tan, Amy, The Joy Luck Club, Vintage/Random House, 1994, ISBN-13: 9780749399573 (pf)
Lahiri, Jhumpa, The Namesake, HarperCollins, 2007, ISBN-13: 9780007245895 (pf) or Lahiri, Jhumpa, The Namesake, HarperCollins, 2004, ISBN: 9780006551805
Dickens, Charles, Great Expectations, Penguin Red Classics, 2006, ISBN-13: 9780141023533 (pf)
Jhabvala, Ruth Prawer, Heat and Dust, John Murray/Hachette, 2003, ISBN-13: 9780719561771 (pf)
Winch, Tara June, Swallow the Air, University of Queensland Press, 2006, ISBN-13: 9780702235214 (pf)
Gaita, Raymond, Romulus, My Father, Text Publishing, May 2007, ISBN-13: 9781921145759 (nf) or Gaita, Raimond, Romulus, My Father, Text Publishing, 1999, ISBN: 9781876485177

Drama (d) or Film (f) or Shakespeare (S)

Miller, Arthur, The Crucible: A Play in Four Acts, Penguin Modern Classics, 2000, ISBN: 9780141182551
Harrison, Jane, ‘Rainbow’s End’ from Cleven,Vivienne et al (eds), Contemporary Indigenous Plays, Currency Press, 2007, ISBN-13: 9780868197951 (d)
Luhrmann, Baz, Strictly Ballroom, Fox, 1992 (f)
De Heer, Rolf, Ten Canoes, 2006, AV Channel/Madman (f)
Shakespeare, William, As You Like It, New Cambridge Shakespeare, 2001, ISBN-13: 9780521294126; or Cambridge School Shakespeare, 2000, ISBN-13: 9780521666367 (S)

Poetry

Skrzynecki, Peter, Immigrant Chronicle, University of Queensland Press, 2002, ISBN-13: 9780702233876
‘Feliks Skrzynecki’, ‘St Patrick’s College’, ‘Ancestors’, ‘10 Mary Street’, ‘Migrant Hostel’, ‘Postcard’, ‘In the Folk Museum’
Dickinson, Emily, Selected Poems of Emily Dickinson (James Reeves ed),Heinemann Education, 1959, ISBN-13: 9780435150235
66 ‘This is my letter to the world’, 67 ‘I died for beauty but was scarce’, 82 ‘I had been hungry all the years’, 83 ‘I gave myself to him’, 127 ‘A narrow fellow in the grass’, 154 ‘A word dropped careless on the page’, 161 ‘What mystery pervades a well!’, 181 ‘Saddest noise, the sweetest noise’
Herrick, Steven, The Simple Gift, University of Queensland Press, 2000, ISBN-13: 9780702231339

Specific editions of the set texts are listed. Schools, however, may use any suitable edition of the text selected, if the specified edition is unavailable. Where a text is quoted in an examination it will be from the listed edition.