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11–12English Extension 11–12 Syllabus

Record of changes
Implementation from 2026
Expand for detailed implementation advice

Content

Year 12 – Extension 2

Author and authority

Students learn about how and why the ways we create and read literature have changed over time and evaluate the relationship between texts and literary criticism. They engage with significant literary thinkers and texts to understand the role that they play in a broader literary context.

Students evaluate literary originality and how innovation has shaped new ways of representing meaning. They interrogate how genre, technology and form can reassign and redistribute authority over a text and question the primacy of the author.

Students explore a range of short texts from the past and the contemporary era, and extracts from larger works that experiment with perspective and form, to evaluate the nature of literary texts and develop a theoretical understanding of the role of the author. They evaluate the changing perceptions of authorship and authority in a range of literary contexts.

Students develop their knowledge of the author’s role in the emergence of new textual forms to evaluate the extent to which an author’s manipulation of form reflects and shapes its context.

Author study

Students develop their understanding of author and authority by exploring ONE author study. In their author study, students evaluate the primacy of the author in creating a text’s meaning. Students will develop an understanding of the roles of the author and reader as reproducers of ideas, language and texts that are part of a broader literary and theoretical context. They develop their understanding of significant thinkers, theories and movements by exploring an author study.

Students apply their knowledge and understanding of author and authority in their own critical and creative compositions. They experiment with perspective, point of view and voice to explore the interrelationship between content, purpose, form and audience. As creators of texts, they reflect on the composition process to consider how their creative choices shape meaning.

Author and authority can be undertaken concurrently with the development of their Major work.

Understanding
  • The ways significant texts generate ideas and develop knowledge of authorship and aesthetics

  • The ways that text, author, reader, context and criticism interact and shape an author’s reception over time and in a range of contexts

  • The ways complex and interconnected textual forms, language features and structures, can represent sophisticated ideas

Responding
  • Craft extended texts to explain, argue, analyse and evaluate ideas and perspectives

  • Craft sophisticated and original texts with precision to develop and communicate complex ideas, perspectives and arguments

  • Craft texts that evaluate the different ways texts are valued and received

  • Craft texts using language and structural choices appropriate to context, audience and purpose

  • Use appropriate academic language in the analysis and evaluation of texts

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