Reflections on writing Pathways for English HSC Standard and Advanced Guide for Teachers Part 2

Pathways for English, a guide for teachers to the Advanced and Standard courses in the new NSW Higher School Certificate, is about to be published and Jane Sherlock and Deb McPherson thought you might appreciate the story about how the book came to be. Here are their reflections on its genesis and what inspired them to write it.

In this blog I am going to concentrate on the texts and strategies for Paper 2. Pathways for English covers 29 texts. The full nine are covered in Texts and human experiences. In Standard Language, culture and identity we cover the full six and in Close study we have covered five of the six. In Advanced we explore three pairs of texts for Textual Conversations and the full six texts for Critical study of literature. For each text exploration we are really proud of the tasks we have created for The craft of writing.

The craft of writing

It is with this focus area, The Craft of writing, I want to start the content of this blog. 

Let me pause and explain why the focus areas do not have all upper case for example, The craft of writing. This is the convention adopted by NESA for this syllabus so we have followed the practice despite it feeling not quite right and we both having trouble remembering to keep it lowercase after the first word!

Over the past seven years I have thought there have been two areas of the syllabus which are not received as well as we would like and yet they are both critical to student engagement and indeed, success. Those are Reading to write in Year 11 and The craft of writing in Year 12. These are the bookends of HSC English. They both require different and specific skills to close and critical study.

Given Reading to Write is the first focus area for Year 11 units need to engage students as newly-minted seniors and at the same time provide some stimulating, interesting and non-year 10 style texts for students to read. Does your Reading to write focus area incorporate a culture of wide reading and student choice? Do you provide a range of writing opportunities and tasks which are both authentically linked to the overarching concept of idea of your Reading to write unit?

But it is The craft of writing I want to explore especially in the context of our new text, Pathways for English. Part 5 is a designated chapter on The craft of writing and in every chapter on the 29 texts we have a section on The craft of writing. We have deliberately included the critical response style in the tasks for each text. Our rationale was for students to see writing for different purposes as part of the English course. This therefore validates and affirms the importance of imaginative, persuasive, discursive and reflective as they sit beside critical responses, not below.

Be sure to read the tasks for texts other than your chosen texts to give you more ideas of how to embed the skills needed for The craft of writing into every lesson. In exploring the different styles, share with your students models of the different styles of writing as reading newspapers and listening to the radio is unlikely to be happening with many of your students.

Our observations and feedback reveal The craft of writing is the least preferred by most students We know that at the HSC level it is the most unpredictable and this can be daunting. Over the 14 questions since 2019 across both courses there has been a wide range of prompts, styles, combinations of one and two parts and this can be unsettling for students. The biggest challenge is, however, time management and to ensure students have 40 minutes left after Section I and II. Added to this is if the question has two parts so students need to divide their time to do justice to the second part which could be worth 8 or even 10 marks. It is a big challenge towards the end of a two-hour examination. I wonder if you and I could do it!

Across The craft of writing we want to build student skills to write for a range of different purposes, audiences in different styles and about different topics/ideas. Our long-term aim is to build student capacity, resilience and exam-readiness. But the greatest outcome of The craft of writing is when students actually start to enjoy the writing process, are proud of what they write and feel a genuine sense of joy and success.

On a purely pragmatic level, The craft of writing is worth 20% of English HSC. Think of our much time you and your students spend on Textual conversations or Close or Critical study and compare that with the time dedicated in the classroom to The craft of writing. Many of you would remember that the ‘creative writing component’ was part of Paper 1 and specifically, what we then called The Area of Study. This component was not a separate focus area and for some was an afterthought for Belonging or Discovery or Change. Now being a specifically-designated focus area gives more credence and legitimacy of writing as a craft. The Stage 6 English Syllabus tells us that in The craft of writing ‘students strengthen and extend their knowledge and skills as writers.’ It is certainly much more relevant for students to develop their skills and capacity beyond the academic essay. And yet… so many students are still unhappy with The craft of writing focus area.

After seven years of designated prescribed texts (17 for Standard and 19 for Advanced), from Term 4, 2026 teachers will be able to broaden their students’ exposure to texts which students can use as mentor texts. These are texts that can provide stimulation, inspiration and models for their own writing. One of the positives is that you can now find inspiring texts from a wider range of sources, perspectives and subject matter. The Sydney Morning Herald and The Guardian are great places to start and writers like Richard Glover, Phillip Adams, Malcom Knox and Waleed Aly are skilled writers, especially in the discursive style. It is also a valuable way to enrich your students’ world view and general knowledge.

We mention some of these in Pathways to English:

• ‘A Booker for children’s lit? It’s about time.’ Jane Sullivan Sydney Morning Herald 15 November 2025
• ‘Banning Books is a Bloody Terrible Idea’ Richard Glover Sydney Morning Herald14 th May 2022
• ‘Harsh history lesson for all modern Australians: Rachel Perkins Helen Pitt Sydney Morning Herald 8 th November 2025
• ‘I surfed the same breaks as Mercury. I hate to see politics trawl this tragedy’ Malcolm Knox Sydney Morning Herald 13 th September 2025
• ‘Latrell Mitchell is the most important person in NSW. Why is he being booed?’ Malcolm Knox Sydney Morning Herald April 5, 2024
• ‘T.S. Eliot Saw All This Coming’ James Parker The Atlantic 2022 
• ‘The Little Things I Love’ Julia Baird Sydney Morning Herald 20th September 2025
• ‘The seatbelt moment for social media’ Richard Glover Sydney Morning Herald March 30th 2019

Of course, you can still use the old Module C texts as there are some marvellous texts to inspire students. I think Luka Lesson’s ‘May your Pen Grace the Page’ is a fabulous performance poem to see the value of passion and personal engagement with a topic. His ‘may your grey matter may no longer be grey’ is such important advice.

Steve Jobs’ speech works well with adolescents and Paul Keating’s speech is still powerful and poignant. Ray Bradbury’s short story ‘The Pedestrian’ is excellent for craft. Nam Le and Colum McCann with their longer short stories have a great deal to offer Advanced students but this is now your opportunity to tap into feature articles, speeches and best of all, specific features of craft in your other texts.

Imagine in your faculty meetings where teachers are encouraged to share the latest ‘gold medal’ text they have found for The craft of writing.

One aspect I think is vital for The craft of writing is to ask students what they personally love about the text. Is there a feature they would love to be able to harness or copy or use to inspire their writing. Sometimes the text may not have been consciously imitated but the passion or commitment or purpose of the writer may be a key influence. Passion is a wonderful impetus for writing and once harnessed it can lead to greater authenticity and impact. In the mentor texts ask students to capture in one or two sentences what they think the author wants them to realise or understand or appreciate. In turn, their own piece of writing could echo this purpose or change it completely.

Maybe future Section III questions may invite students to reference their texts from other focus areas. This has happened in 2021 for Standard where Part (b) required students to ‘Explain how the creative decisions that you made in part (a) were influenced by a prescribed text that you have studied.’ While many students chose to use their Module C texts, some successfully drew on texts from their other Modules.

While presenting at a Dubbo HSC event in the first year of The craft of writing in 2019, a teacher’s question inspired me to create a table which I share with you here. In our chapter on The craft of writing we supply examples from One Night the Moon and Warlight.

How your texts can be used for Module C responses

Using other focus area texts, encourage students to consider how the composer invites them into the world of the text in the opening sentence or paragraph or minutes of a film. Use extracts from all your texts as a jumping off point for a piece of writing to take the text
further. It is about ‘writing to write’ and building skills of quick thinking, quick writing and building confidence.

Every focus area and in particular, The craft of writing needs opportunities to write in what I call ‘no risk’ and low risk’ situations. That is, writing when it doesn’t count towards an Assessment task or an exam but it is writing to build the skills of writing. Your job has become more challenging, complex and at times, overwhelming. But please do not give up. Build a classroom culture that everything counts! Frequent writing will build fluency, confidence, mastery of skills and writing can then become ‘normalised.’

The more we can validate students’ own experiences, life, hobbies, interests and knowledge the better chance we have of valuing their own ideas. Each of our students is an expert in specific areas and if they can bring that knowledge, understanding and indeed, passion to their writing, there is much more chance of success. As I wrote in Pathways for English I have encountered students who not only disliked The craft of writing component but felt obliged to choose topics which they thought the markers would approve or the students thought were ‘sophisticated’ and ‘clever.’ Their writing was often stilted and dull. To try to counter this, I asked them what they loved to do and suddenly they were animated in sharing their new-found love of the flamenco guitar or picking up the saxophone once they had the courage to refuse any more piano lessons. My favourite was a delightful young man whose job was to be chosen to groom and look after the prize-winning cows at the Royal Easter Show. His knowledge was extraordinary, his passion was genuine and his piece of writing lifted off the page and … Matt was proud! Then there was Will who set his flamenco piece in Madrid during the Civil War having explored Orwell’s involvement in Spain and combined that with his own knowledge of flamenco to create a stunning piece. It was the first time I had seen him smile. Reading Georgia’s saxophone story was one of those special moments of teaching. She interspersed musical  terminology, references from John Coltrane with the infectious joy of her own playing.

Text selection

If you haven’t made your text choices yet, dip into some of the new ones or texts you may have considered in the past but did not pursue. In Standard, Language, identity and culture we have covered prose fiction: The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri, Swallow the Air by Tara June Winch; Poetry: The Perseverance by Raymond Antrobus and Contemporary Asian Australian Poets and also the play Shafana and Aunt Sarrinah and the film The Quiet Girl. These are all texts which authentically explore notions of culture and identity and how language achieves this. We have emphasised the syllabus direction to explore a ‘range of textual material’ and can see this direction as a valuable way to build skills for Paper 1 Section I and growing students’ worldview and general knowledge. Depending on your school’s demographics it also enables background and context for such texts like Shafana and Aunt Sarrinah, Swallow the Air and The Perseverance.

Close study of literature is the most traditional focus area for teachers and students. Re-reading and re-viewing will be rewarded. Our aim is for students to grow their skills to become an expert on their text for Close study of literature. Close textual detail is important in student responses and this can be from any part of the text. In most cases the text will have potential for authentic integration of The craft of writing. Just a reminder too that there is a dot point about considering other perspectives in Close study of literature. This has traditionally been the domain of Advanced but it is important for Standard students as well to consider what others have said about their text. We have chapters on the two prose fictions: Feed by M.T. Anderson, Limberlost by Robbie Arnott, poetry by Oodgeroo Noonuccal and Carol Ann Duffy, and the film Arrival.

In Advanced some teachers decide on Textual conversations first in their text choices as the choice impacts the remaining pattern of study. In the new HSC Prescriptions list there are six pairs across the range of textual forms. Keats and Bright Star have been on the list since 2019, Mrs Dalloway and The Hours since 2015 and Julius Caesar and The Prince return after inclusion from 2015-2020. The other texts have been in different courses and modules. Barbara Baynton’s Bush Studies (paired with poetry from Ali Cobby Eckermann) and Olga Tokarczuk’s Drive your Plough Over the Bones of the Dead (paired with the poetry of William Blake) are both new to the list. Pathways For English includes a chapter on the poetry of William Blake and Drive Your Plough over the Bones of the Dead, Keats’ poetry and Campion’s film Bright Star, and Hamlet and the poetry of Emily Dickinson.

Most schools start the new year with this focus area and usually need the entire term. Time management and programming are critical to ensure that the texts are given comprehensive coverage as a pair. The challenge is not to treat the texts as separate critical studies but to work in tandem with the other text and to consider how the second text echoes the first and in turn how it is disparate to it. This is demanding but is part of the joy to understanding how one text reveals much about its context but two texts tell us more about humanity.

In Advanced Critical Study of literature we cover all six texts: There are two prose fiction: Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice and Michael Ondaatje, Warlight and two poets: Louise Glück, Poems and William Butler Yeats, WB Yeats: Poems selected by Seamus Heaney. There are two texts set for study as drama and both are by Shakespeare:  Othello and Henry IV Part I.

Critical study of literature is the cornerstone of our subject English. It is the focus area where teachers and students take time to deeply explore a text that has been chosen for its significance, value and indeed, delight. The text choices have been significantly reduced to six texts for Term 4 2026 and 2027 and the range of textual forms has reduced; for example, there is no film or non-Shakespearean drama in this focus area. This is a rich seam of wonderful texts and if you are like me, you would love to do them all!

Writing Pathways for English has reminded me how much I enjoy writing especially about literature. It has also reminded me that being an English teacher is really the best job and that if we can inspire our HSC students to leave school with a few gems they have read then we have achieved an important goal. That is why text selection is critical and knowing your students is a key to the decisions you make.

What Deb always says an important mantra: ‘is this the best novel you want your students to read in their final year of English? Is this the play they will remember and the poet they will cherish’?