ENGLISH · Web viewToday’s youth are characterised by apathy and political disinterest. They...

St Stephen’s SchoolYear 12 English ATAR Course Examination, Semester One 2017

Question Paper

ENGLISHEnglish ATAR (Year Twelve)

Time allowed for this paper (or as determined by the school) Reading time before commencing work: Ten minutesWorking time for paper: Three hours

Materials required/recommended for this paperTo be provided by the supervisorThis Question PaperStandard Answer Book

To be provided by the candidateStandard items: pens, pencils, eraser or correction fluid, ruler, highlighterSpecial items: nil

Important note to candidatesNo other items may be taken into the examination room. It is your responsibility to ensure that you do not have any unauthorised notes or other items of a non-personal nature in the examination room. If you have any unauthorised material with you, hand it to the supervisor before reading any further.

© St Stephen’s School - Carramar

Structure of this paper

SectionNumber of questions available

Number of questions to be answered

Suggested working time

(minutes)

Marks available

Percentage of exam

Section One: Comprehending 3 3 60 30 30

Section Two: Responding 6 1 60 40 40

Section Three: Composing 5 1 60 30 30

Total 100

Instructions to candidates

1. The rules for the conduct of Western Australian external examinations are detailed in the WACE Manual. Sitting this examination implies that you agree to abide by these rules.

2. Write your answers to each section in the Standard Answer Book or paper supplied by your school or college.

3. You must be careful to confine your responses to the specific questions asked and to follow any instructions that are specific to a particular question.


Section One: Comprehending (30 Marks)In this section, there are three (3) texts and three (3) questions. Answer all questions.

You are required to comprehend and analyse unseen written and visual texts and respond concisely in approximately 200–300 words for each question.

Suggested working time: 60 minutes

Question 1: (10 marks)

Explain how Text 1 uses visual elements to create certain expectations about the TV show.


Explore how language features in Text 2 present ideas about teenagers.


Explain how stylistic features in Text 3 offer insight into the narrator’s state of mind.

See next page for Text 1


Text 1

Promotional poster for the 2012 crime drama TV series Elementary, which is a modern take on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s fictional Victorian Era stories of Londoner Sherlock Holmes, a detective of considerable intellect, and his friend and assistant, Dr John Watson.



Text 2

This is an extract from the 2014 article “Images of Australian Youth: from symbols of hope to disposable lives”, written by Camilla Nelson for the website The Conversation, an Australian-based independent news website.

If you have been listening to certain politicians, you may be gripped by the rising tide of panic about a younger generation who – apparently – threaten the very fabric of our society.

Young Australians are lazy, narcissistic and dishonest. They do not do what they are told. They are slackers, sponges and bludgers who are – apparently – unable and unwilling to get or hold down a job.

They cannot spell. They cannot read or write. They cannot name the capital of this country. They wear their pants hanging down around their arses, their undies on the outside and are always blasting crappy music through their earphones as they tweet #yoloswag.

Today’s youth are characterised by apathy and political disinterest. They occupy a twilight world defined by Instagram and hashtags. They are only interested in themselves – hence, their signature gesture is the selfie.

Worst of all, they are said to be darkening our world with an epidemic of misbehaviour. When they are not binge drinking or taking drugs, they are murdering each other – or innocent passers-by – with king hits and coward punches. Society is forced to retaliate with lockouts and curfews – or a popular commercial alternative such as the Mosquito alarm, badged by European civil liberties groups as a form of sonic torture for under 25s.

These are the generational stereotypes informing our responses to some of the most pressing social problems of our age, including youth unemployment, homelessness, mental illness and suicide.

Somehow, the idea that young people might have problems has, as Henry Giroux has so often pointed out, mutated into a prevailing belief that young people are the problem. Society disinvests, education is defunded, institutions abandon civic responsibilities, class divides harden, charities struggle to meet the flood of needy demand – and governments move their considerable resources into police, prisons and punishment.

Young people were once characterised by the idea of innocence and hope for the future. They were — so, for example, the Anzac myth went — the best and the brightest, embodying the “destiny of the nation”.

This quaint-sounding idealisation of youth was in many ways a product of a previous century’s belief in progress. The myth was often at odds with grim realities, which, for example, included child labour and poverty. Nevertheless, the idealisation of youth arguably helped to engender a progressive tendency that contributed to the eradication of social problems.

In our own century this idea of progress has imploded, to be replaced by the image of a future in ruins. In this vision, the future is filled not with promise, but with uncertainty.

Accordingly, young people have ceased to be represented as a repository for our brightest hopes, but as the embodiment of our darkest fears. Culturally, they are condemned to eke out a marginal existence. They are uneconomic propositions in an economically minded society that fails to measure compassion, hope or social justice.



Text 3

The following is from the opening chapter to Belinda Jeffrey’s 2009 Australian novel, Brown Skin Blue.

This might sound harsh to you, I reckon, and that’s a good thing. But it’s the kind of story that goes round and round in some places – places where I come from – that most people don’t talk about. It scuttles in under the floorboards of our houses and shanties and vans, like cockroaches. It sits thick and heavy around everything like the dirt. Sometimes, when the heavens open up and the rain comes, I think it’s almost washed away, but water dries fast around here and the ground cracks and bleeds again in the heat.

I’m seventeen now and I don’t say much. At least that is what people tell me. I got a whole lot of names. Darkie, Brownie, Dirt, Barry-bloody-Mundy. Some white people in Landcruiser trucks called me an Indigenous Australian, once. But I’m not. Well, not that I know of. My mother’s white, but my skin is dark, and she’s never exactly tole me why.

The people I work with on the Top End Croc Jumping Cruises call me Barramundy. They reckon that when I’m asked something my mouth opens and closes like a fish and nothing comes out. They make jokes about it saying I’m so busy trying to breathe I can’t think. That I’m like a fish out of water. But the truth is there’s too much to say to any one question and nothing’s simple.

It’s true that sometimes I feel like I can’t breathe. That my lungs can’t get enough air. I’ve seen fish lying on the banks of rivers, their gills flapping open and closed in time with their mouths, working hard at living but dying fast. I’m lookin’ at myself in those moments, because it’s like McNabm Blue caught me with the end of this noose by doing what he did to me. And sometimes I can feel it tightening round my own throat. Sometimes I feel like grabbing a bloke around the throat, squeezing hard, and telling him to try talking. But just because words don’t come easy from my mouth doesn’t mean they don’t go round in my head.

End of Section One


Section Two: Responding (40 Marks)In this section there are 6 questions. Answer one (1) question.

Your response should demonstrate your understanding of form, purpose, context and audience.

You must make primary reference to any text or text type that you have studied.

Suggested working time: 60 minutes.


With reference to two texts you have studied, compare how particular ideas are represented to appeal to certain audiences.


The purpose of a text often responds to the contexts within which it is produced. Discuss with close reference to at least one text you have studied.


Language features often influence how people interpret a text. Explore this idea with close reference to the language features of two texts you have studied.


With close reference to one text, explain how different perspectives in a text shape an audience’s responses and interpretations.


With reference to two texts, evaluate how similar themes are treated in different texts.


Examine how and why a particular genre and its conventions have changed or been adapted over time.

End of Section Two


Section Three: Composing (30 Marks)

In this section there are five (5) questions. Answer one (1) question.

You are required to demonstrate writing skills by choosing a form of writing appropriate to a specific audience, context and purpose.

Suggested working time: 60 minutes


Write to persuade an audience that we must “speak out on behalf of the voiceless, and for the rights of all who are vulnerable” Proverbs 31:8-9.


Write a short story that focusses on a conflict suggested by this image.


Demonstrate an understanding of genre by writing a piece that uses the following image for inspiration.



“The duty of youth is to challenge corruption.” Kurt Cobain, Singer/Musician: 1967-1994.

Compose a text that takes a deliberate stance on Cobain’s belief.


Use the quote below as the first or last line of a narrative piece that focuses on a specific perspective:

“This is the land of dreamings, a land of wide horizons and secret places”

End of Examination


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