English Teachers Association
Students
How to do English
Area of Study - The Journey
Texts of your own Choosing
One of the pleasures of the HSC is being able to read what you want to read. This is done through the texts of your own choosing. What the Board of Studies requires is that these texts are
- relevant to the Area of Study and
- are drawn from a variety of sources, in a range of genres and media.
In choosing which texts to use in an Area of Study response, you need to
- make connections between that text and the Journey
- show how your text represents the Journey and enriches your knowledge of the ways we understand this concept.
You can make your points more effectively about different ways The Journey is represented if you use a variety of genres, modes and media, So use texts that are in different forms than your prescribed text and the texts you may refer to from the stimulus booklet.
Here are some suggestions for some texts that are different from the traditional choices:
- Giant Screen Movie
Size does matter! The giant screen requires different kinds of texts and ways of expressing ideas than a normal film or a television. Next time you are at the IMAX, think about seeing these. Here is a study guide to help you relate these to your Area of Study.
- Museum Exhibition
Museums have the reputation of having dusty old cases filled with fossils but this is not so. Modern museums are exciting places with a range of texts - objects with labels, films, sound scapes, interactives. Any visit to a museum is a journey of some kind. - you walk through it don't you? There are plenty of exhibitions around you in cities and small towns.
- Virtual Journey
Join Natalie and Chris Hatherly on their year-long cycling journey across Central Asia here. This web site gives you the chance to share in Nat's and Chris' challenges and experiences and to learn first-hand about the lives of people from another continent. Browse their diary entries and media files and become involved in the interaction section of the website. You can also subscribe to and browse the Cycle Asia electronic newsletter.
IMAX
The IMAX big screen movie is a type of text not often considered by students as texts of their own choosing. Yet exploration of the concept of the Journey is particularly well suited to 2 films - Titanic 3D- Ghosts of the Abyss and Shackleton's Antarctic Adventure. These are currently screening at the IMAX in Darling Harbour.
Both films very fine examples of the big screen movie genre and offer interesting opportunities for studying how the concept of the journey is represented in texts.
- They both use the discourse of adventure so common in the representation of journeys. This will allow you to examine assumptions underlying the concept of the journey as adventure.
- The structure of texts about journeys becomes apparent. Look at the way the Shackleton film has a linear structure, so typical of texts about journeys, whereas the Titanic movie has multiple layers of story which challenge this conventional sequencing of actions.
The IMAX has commissioned ETA to write student material for these two films specifically to support HSC students in their Area of Study.