Assessment Type 1: Responding to Texts (50%)

Students produce up to five responses to their text studies; together, the responses comprise a maximum of 5000 words. One of these responses can be oral or multimodal in form, where 6 minutes is equivalent to 1000 words. There is flexibility within this study for the texts to be considered in terms of each other, leading to a single response or set of responses of up to 5000 words.

As a set, the responses must cover each of the following text studies:

• extended prose text
• film text
• drama text
• poetry texts.

For the extended prose, film, and drama texts, two of the texts must be from the text list. The third text may be from this list, but is not required to be.

The poetry texts should include poems by at least three poets, with at least one of the poets selected from those on the text list.

One text response must be a critical perspectives task, in which students consider one or more texts (or a selection of texts in the case of poetry) from two critical perspectives. Students consider how the position adopted in a critical perspective reflects a particular interpretation of a text. The perspectives can either be from an identified lens (e.g. feminist or post-colonial perspective) or reflect the student’s awareness of their own critical reading of the text or texts and the way in which that is informed by the perspectives of other readers, viewers, or critics.

For example, a:

• text by a contemporary Indian writer considered from a post-colonial and a feminist perspective
• Shakespeare play interpreted in terms of its representation of gender and psychological motivation
• nineteenth-century text scrutinised from a socioeconomic and a race perspective
• collection of poems examined from a psychological and a personal reading perspective
• war film viewed from a pacifist and a historical perspective.

For this assessment type, students provide evidence of their learning in relation to the following assessment design criteria:

• knowledge and understanding
• analysis
• application.