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Year 12 English Extension 2Major Works 2015

I write...

only because there is a voice within me that

will not be still.

I write...

because I can make everything up as I go along.

I write...

so that I can live the life I want to, even if it’s not real.

I write...

for the off chance that I can create something more than

words on a page.

I write...

because I want to be there for those who don’t have anyone

else.

I write...

because no one gets to tell me what to write or how to

write it.

I write...

because creating something that didn’t exist before is as close to

magic as I’ll ever get.

I write...because I can write the things I’ll

never be able to say out loud.

I write...

because I express myself best through writing.

I write...because I have a story that’s

begging to be told.

I write...

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Congratulations to the five students who have completed their Major

Work in English Extension 2 this year. We have four original short stories across a range of subject matter and genres in the Print Medium category and one set of Speeches as part of the Sound Medium category. According to the HSC English Extension 2 Course requirements and outcomes, students ‘develop a sustained composition, and document and reflect on this process’. This sounds simple enough to do over the course of a year, but the Extension 2 syllabus also calls for their compositions to be completed to ‘a level of distinction’ and be ‘substantial’, demonstrating ‘depth, insight, and originality’. This is not as easy as some students initially think when commencing the course and the ‘systematic and rigorous’ research they pursue which must be ‘autonomous, thorough and extensive’ certainly provides challenges for them. For most it is probably the first time they have completed such an extensive piece of research and engaged in both a critical and creative process simultaneously. Some are daunted by word limits of 6000 words, others are challenged by the evaluative nature and density of text demanded by their 1500 word Reflection Statement.

However, what happens to a student over the course of this year is that

she rises to these challenges and truly becomes a scholar –that is, a specialist in a particular branch of study, a learned person. She also develops a profound knowledge of herself as a learner. Some students will see themselves as learners who procrastinate, some learn through serious contemplation, some learn by trial and error, and some learn despite themselves and by accident! Each year the Extension 2 cohort is different from the previous year and each year they are different from each other. This is the most exciting part of the course for a teacher, that is, wondering what each student will bring to the group and how to work with this in what can be a long, yet fulfilling process. Despite these different ways of tackling the creative process we, and I include myself in this, have arrived at the conclusion of the course with five fine Major Works and a strong sense of pride in this achievement. We hope you enjoy hearing of the inspirations for and readings/recordings from these Major Works.

Julie Kadir

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Lescinska FernandezMy English Extension Major Work, a set of two speeches delivered at a fictitious international conference entitled “Passion Into Action”, explores gender inequality. I wanted to challenge cultural assumptions about the perpetuated violence against women in India and highlight the culturally derived attitudes against women, with the purpose of encouraging political and social change in the conference audience of international and national delegates. I was primarily motivated by my passion for human rights and alleviating injustices against women in our world.

My choice to set my speeches at an international conference entitled “Passion into Action”, was influenced by my experiences at conferences such as UN Women’s - International Women’s Day Breakfast1 and Common Ground2, as I have experienced first-hand the lasting impacts of such events, and their calls to action. My decision to have the conference held on the ‘International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women’ - the 25th November, 2015, was significant as the audience of international delegates at the conference, both men and women, and a broader audience of women in India, in particular, will be interested in gender politics, passionate about gender equality and appalled by culturally enshrined violence against women.

I have effectively showcased two complementary speeches, that of an oppressed Indian woman who has experienced unrelenting violence, and that of an educated Australian woman, with extensive experience in combatting violence. I chose to give voice to women, both educated and uneducated, marginalised and privileged, western and Indian to highlight the advantages of globalisation, and the beneficial impacts of two countries, India and Australia, in sharing knowledge and strategies for combatting gender inequality. The speeches vary in style as each speaker has a different purpose.

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EmmaKate KhouryMy major work entitled “Cornucopia” is a short story within the social realism genre that explores the symbiotic relationship between reality and illusion for an individual. Appealing to adolescents interested in the function of the illusory world, my short story emphasises the benefits of using illusion to cope with reality through the experience of my protagonist, Zoe, as she drifts to and from her illusory world. Zoe’s daydreams follow the journey of a Roman gladiator who exhibits the values privileged in the Ancient Roman World, namely fidelity, dignity and benevolence. It is Zoe’s exploration of her daydreams that in turn allows her to recognise these values mirrored in her reality, reshaping her understanding of her father, Doug, and that of the Australian farmers he represents.

The impetus for my story was a combination of my fondness for Virgil’s The Aeneid and the nostalgic stories of my Grandparents growing up and living in rural Australia. I was impassioned by the romance and heroic development of the Romans depicted in Virgil’s epic poem and this began to resonate with my understanding of my Grandparents’ stories. My composition does not strive to replicate my Grandparents stories; rather, I have woven aspects of their resilient attitude and appreciation of country life into the formation of the father character. It is my protagonist’s exploration of her daydreams that assists her in recognising the Roman values embodied in her father.

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Montana Meucci“Worlds Down Under” is a short story, which explores the Australian identity as shaped and circumscribed by the human relationship with the landscape. In our current context, where fears of global warming and climate change theories bombard society, I wanted to interrogate the changing nature of this relationship over time and hence chart its impact on the Australian psyche. My intended audience is young adults, a population that is most threatened by the effect of climate change, yet has the capacity to reduce the potential consequences and rebuild the connection to the landscape.

The general idea for this story was circulating years before commencing my English Extension Two studies. At ages 15 and 16, I ruminated upon the themes of climate change, politics and terrorist threats seen frequently on television. I questioned how media portrayal of these global events influenced my sense of being a contemporary Australian. Would our responsibility for stewardship of the environment be gradually lost to the ravages of human exploitation and complacency? I was and still feel troubled by this notion, seeing the creation of Worlds Down Under as an opportunity to critique both individual egoism, rapacious consumerism and society’s lack of regard for the landscape, which frames both personal and cultural identity.

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Meghan RaumerMy Major Work, a short story entitled “The Cell Experiment”, explores the concept of illusion and reality. It challenges the notion that illusion and reality are mutually exclusive and dichotomous. Rather, my story poses that the line between illusion and reality is indistinct, such that one’s classification of something as ‘reality’ or ‘ illusion’ is predicated by the absence of evidence to the contrary. This fluid duality between the concepts of illusion and reality is exemplified by situations where an individual may believe so strongly in an illusion that it becomes their reality. My intention is to challenge readers to re evaluate their own understandings of these conceptual classifications. To challenge my reader’s existing assumptions of illusion and reality, my protagonist is a test subject placed within a population experiment designed to simulate his ‘reality’ in a dystopian, alternate context. After a series of critical events he gradually begins to to question and ultimately shatter the mosaic of established reality. Given the complex nature of my concept, my intended audience is educated individuals interested in reading dystopian fiction within the genre of psychological realism.

My predilection for dystopian fiction provided the impetus for investigation of existing conventional themes in this genre in order to find a gap that my short story could fill. In the process of my investigations, I became intrigued by the possibility of population control during crisis situations, as it was left largely unexplored except in stories featuring contamination apocalypses and environmental disasters.

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Alouise SomeraMy Major Work, a short story entitled “Dead Girl Walking”, explores the concepts of grief and loss. Through my short story I hope to give my audience of young adult readers an insight into the nature and wide ranging impact of grief for and on those who experience death and loss, which in my short story is depicted in the loss of an adolescent child. To attempt to explore the relationship between loss and grief in a way that provides new or different insights as well as will resonate with young adults, I have chosen to situate the narrative in an unconventional context of loss and grief. In my narrative the protagonist, an adolescent girl named Mina, has not actually died but is trapped in a rare mental illness – Cotard’s Syndrome – which causes her to believe she is dead. Young adults often grapple with questions pertaining to their own mortality and self-worth, as well as struggle to come to terms with loss. By placing an adolescent girl’s experiences of “death” at the centre of the story, along with its impact on family and friends, I hope to invoke aspects of the young adult fiction genre to engage my audience and explore the principal ideas of the work. To give further complexity to the narrative, I have also located the characters’ experiences within a particular cultural and religious context, namely that of Catholic Filipino.

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