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NSW Curriculum
NSW Education Standards Authority

11–12English EAL/D 11–12 Syllabus (2024)

Implementation from 2026
Expand for detailed implementation advice

Content

Year 12

Texts and human experiences

Students interpret and respond to texts that examine what it means to be human. They experiment with different approaches to textual appreciation and analysis, consolidating and building on skills in reading, Loading , listening, viewing, Loading  and Loading . They undertake the study of ONE prescribed text and explore a range of short texts in a variety of Loading  and media. Students examine how texts provide insight into emotional, intellectual, physical, Loading  and lived experiences and draw from personal experience to make connections between themselves, the world of the text and their wider world.

They consider the role of storytelling throughout time in communicating and reflecting the human experience. They explore how texts represent the tension between agency and conformity in our human experience, while examining the paradoxes of motivation and behaviour. Explicit, targeted English Loading  study centres on structural, stylistic and linguistic elements, including the use of descriptive and expressive language in spoken and written texts. Students analyse texts, comparing and contrasting the ways Loading , narrators and personas represent insights into the human experience and explore their own assumptions about the possibilities of human experience.

Understanding
  • Comparative, temporal and consequential conjunctions

  • The impact of direct and indirect speech

  • The use of literary and persuasive features, including rhetorical devices, Loading  and dramatic Loading , in familiar and unfamiliar texts

  • The ways arguments are presented in nonfiction texts

Responding
  • Compose creative, informed and Loading  interpretations of texts supported by integrated textual evidence

  • Apply a range of Loading  in own compositions

  • Make connections with other texts through language, form and structure

  • Use cohesive links and discourse markers to show cause and effect in spoken and written texts

  • Use metalanguage to interpret texts and evaluate their own learning

Prescriptions (2027–2030)

These prescriptions must not be taught until Term 4, 2026. They will be examined in the HSC from 2027.

For prescriptions examined in the current HSC year, see HSC English prescriptions 2019–2026 [PDF 560.06 KB].

Prose fiction
  • Parrett, Favel, Past the ShallowsHachette Australia, 2013, ISBN: 9780733630491
  • van Neerven, Ellen (ed), Flock: First Nations Stories Then and NowUniversity of Queensland Press, 2021, ISBN: 9780702263033van Neerven, Ellen, ‘Each City’; Thompson, Adam, ‘Honey’; Saward, Melanie, ‘Galah’; Saunders, Mykaela, ‘River Story’; Lucashenko, Melissa, ‘Dreamers’; Leane, Jeanine, ‘Forbidden Fruit’
Poetry
  • Gray, Robert, Coast Road: Selected PoemsBlack Inc, 2014, ISBN: 9781863957021‘Journey, the North Coast’, ‘The Meatworks’, ‘To the Master, Dōgen Zenji’, ‘Late Ferry’, ‘Flames and Dangling Wire’, ‘Byron Bay: Winter’, ‘Philip Hodgins (1959–1995)’
  • Noonuccal, Oodgeroo, My PeopleWiley, 2020, ISBN: 9780730391081‘Corroboree’, ‘Ballad of Totems’, ‘No More Boomerang’, ‘Son of Mine’, ‘We Are Going’, ‘The Past’, ‘Reed Flute Cave’
Drama, film, media or nonfiction
  • Darling, Ian, Stories of Me (media)2012
  • Winton, Tim, The Boy Behind the Curtain (nonfiction)Penguin, 2017, ISBN: 9780143785996‘Havoc: A Life in Accidents’, ‘A Walk at Low Tide’, ‘Betsy’, ‘The Wait and the Flow’, ‘Chasing Giants’, ‘The Demon Shark’

Where a prescribed text is listed as a series of poems or short stories, all listed selections constitute the prescribed text.

Specific editions of the texts set for study are listed here. If the specified edition is out of print or widely unavailable, schools may use any suitable edition of the text selected. Where a text is quoted in an examination question, it will be from the listed edition.

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