HSC English EAL/D study guide
HSC English EAL/D · Work through your exam, one topic at a time.
English EAL/D is a NSW Stage 6 Board Developed Course for students in Years 11 and 12 whose education in English has been relatively recent. Under the English EAL/D Stage 6 Syllabus (2017), it may be studied by any student educated overseas, or in an Australian institution where English was the language of instruction, for five years or less before starting Year 11; the principal determines the main language of instruction at previous schools and an eligibility declaration is completed. The HSC English EAL/D study guide has 4 sections and about 1,440 words.
01Module A: Texts and Human Experiences
Module A is built on the idea that texts represent individual and collective human experiences, and that studying them changes how you see the world and yourself. You need to understand: individual experience (a character's particular story), collective experience (shared social, historical or cultural conditions), anomalies and paradoxes (behaviour that defies expectation or contradicts itself), assumptions and beliefs challenged by the text, and the role of storytelling in shaping memory and identity.
375 words, about 2 min02Module B: Language, Identity, Culture
Module B examines how language constructs and is constructed by identity and culture. Core concepts: language and identity (how idiolect, dialect, register and naming position a speaker), language and culture (how words encode values, kinship, belief and history), code-switching (shifting variety or register according to audience and purpose), standard and non-standard varieties and the attitudes attached to them, language maintenance and loss (including the effect of colonisation and global English), and representation (how texts frame a group's voice).
365 words, about 2 min03Module C: Close Study of Text
Module C requires sustained, detailed analysis of one prescribed text: its form, structure, language, characterisation, setting, point of view and the ideas it explores. You must understand how meaning is made rather than what happens.
367 words, about 2 min04Focus on Writing
Focus on Writing develops your control of written expression for both analytical and creative tasks. You need to understand: audience, purpose and context and how they determine register; structure (thesis, topic sentences, transitions, conclusion); cohesion and coherence through referencing and connectives; sentence variety (simple, compound, complex) and its effect on pace; nominalisation and modality for precision and hedging; lexical choice and connotation ; editing for accuracy in spelling, punctuation and syntax; and reflection on your own composing choices, which the syllabus explicitly values.
333 words, about 2 min