Sustained critical reading: language and style, competing interpretations, and the relationship between a text and its contexts.
These are the statements the English Extension 1 syllabus makes about Critical Study of Literature. Dux records each one against the questions you answer, so you can see which of them you have actually been tested on and which have never been asked.
Close reading at the level of syntax and diction, where the interpretation is carried by the wording.
How a writer's style produces meaning, and how style differs from decoration.
Expressing a theme as a claim the text makes rather than a topic it mentions.
How readings of a text have differed, and what those differences disclose about the readers.
The relationship between a text and its historical moment, without reducing one to the other.
How genre conventions enable and constrain meaning, and what a text gains by breaking them.
What changes when a text is adapted or appropriated, and what the new version reveals about the old.
HSC English Extension 1 - Trial Paper Shape is 50 marks in 120 minutes. Questions on Critical Study of Literature are not one shape repeated: the command word decides what the marker is looking for, and the mark value decides how much of it. These are the ones English Extension 1 uses.
Dux writes practice for this module in exactly these shapes, so the drill is the same task the paper sets — not a general knowledge quiz with the module name on it.
Critical Study of Literature is module 3 of 4 in English Extension 1. Students routinely lose marks because a question spans two modules, so the neighbouring modules are worth reading next to this one.
Dux diagnoses English Extension 1 dot point by dot point, then writes questions in the shape this course marks. Written answers come back marked against the bands.