Study guides, by module
Free Band 6 guides for HSC English Advanced, grouped the way NESA structures the course. Pick your module, then your text.
Exam skills
Breaking down the question
What NESA key words like analyse, discuss and evaluate actually ask for, and how to spot the focus and scope of any question.
Read the guide →The TEEL paragraph
The paragraph structure every marker knows (Topic, Evidence, Explanation, Link), and how to write the Explanation so it actually analyses.
Read the guide →The conceptual thesis
Turn a plot-summary opening into a real idea about human experience that your whole essay can argue.
Read the guide →Building a Band 6 paragraph
Embed the evidence, weave context into the analysis, land the return line, and finish on the composer's craft.
Read the guide →Bands & the 4 criteria
Plain-English on how the 20-mark essay is marked: the four things a marker looks for, and what each band really means.
Read the guide →Techniques glossary
Plain-language definitions of the literary and dramatic techniques used across the guides, each shown in a real prescribed text.
Open the glossary →Common Module: Texts and Human Experiences
How texts represent individual and collective human experiences, and the emotions, paradoxes and insights that arise from them.
The Crucible
Full guideArthur Miller · play
Open the guide →Nineteen Eighty-Four
George Orwell · novel
How to write the essay →The Merchant of Venice
William Shakespeare · play
How to write the essay →Billy Elliot
Stephen Daldry · film
How to write the essay →Past the Shallows
Favel Parrett · novel
How to write the essay →All the Light We Cannot See
Anthony Doerr · novel
How to write the essay →The Boy Behind the Curtain
Tim Winton · prose nonfiction
How to write the essay →I Am Malala
Malala Yousafzai & Christina Lamb · memoir
How to write the essay →Rosemary Dobson — Collected
Rosemary Dobson · poetry
How to write the essay →Kenneth Slessor — Selected Poems
Kenneth Slessor · poetry
How to write the essay →Rainbow's End
Jane Harrison · play
How to write the essay →Go Back to Where You Came From
Ivan O'Mahoney · documentary
How to write the essay →Waste Land
Lucy Walker · documentary
How to write the essay →Module A: Textual Conversations
A comparative study of how a later text reimagines and responds to an earlier one, and what the pairing reveals.
Module B: Critical Study of Literature
A deep study of one prescribed text: its textual integrity, and how and why it has been valued over time.
Module C: The Craft of Writing
Developing your own craft as a writer by learning from how skilled composers build and shape their texts.
Studying a Common Module text we don't list yet? The marking tool still works — mark your essay.