English

In English this semester, our Year 12 English students congregated in the school hall to watch a lecture from the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) on their comparative texts: Charlie’s Country and The Hate Race.  Soon after our Year 12 English as Additional (EAL) students viewed a theatrical exploration of their own comparative texts: The Seven Stages of Grieving and The Longest Memory.  While some voluntary Year 7s and 8s participated in the International Competitions and Assessments for Schools (ICAS) English test, receiving commendable results, our Year 10s and 11s undertook revision preparing for the valuable experience of exams.  A big congratulations to all of our Year 12 English, EAL, English Language and Literature students upon the completion of their courses and end of year exams. Please enjoy the following samples of student writing below from an array of units across English subjects and happy reading during the Summer break to all! 

Year 7 Mentor Texts Unit

After examining a range of mentor texts, students planned and wrote a narrative capturing an engaging moment.  

 The rain had just stopped, but the dark clouds had not yet completely dispersed. The sun was barely visible in the cracks between the clouds. The water on the eaves was dripping, and the surroundings were very quiet. 

 "Mom, hurry up" a shout broke the silence. "Uncle's car is parked on the side of the road".

  Every time on vacation, my uncle would bring my cousin to my house for lunch and go out to play together. This time was no exception, and they arrived as promised.  

Mom heard my shout, wiped the flour on her hands with her apron, and walked out wearing slippers, "Why so early this time? I haven't cooked yet!" She smiled politely. 

"You brought so many presents," Mom said, hugging my 7-year-old cousin. My uncle was busy parking the car, and I came into the house with the gifts that he had just unloaded from the car and prepared tea for them. 

When we got home, we quickly finished our lunch and accepted Mom's suggestion to take a bike ride along the road in front of our house. There were four bicycles in our family. I lent my old bicycle to my younger brother, and just like that, we hit the road together. 

It had rained and the road was slippery. My cousin and I rode slowly in front, followed by my mother and uncle. As we turned the corner, I was caught off guard, like a bolt of lightning falling from the sky. When I came to my senses, my cousin was lying on the ground with the bike on his right leg. I looked up, a young boy who was a little taller than me, was straddling a bicycle and landed on one foot, but he didn't seem to want to get off the bike to check the situation. I couldn't care less, so I quickly got off my bike and helped my cousin up from the ground. 

My mother and uncle caught up to us from behind, tears welling in my cousin's eyes. My cousin was very strong, humming a few times but not crying. I held my cousin's hand and looked at my mother without blinking. I was only 10 years old at the time, so I didn't know how to deal with it. My mother nervously checked my cousin's injury, it was fine, but the skin was scratched. 

 "You should apologize, boy," Mom said to the boy seriously. But the boy stared straight at my mother, glanced at my uncle again, and said nothing. He adjusted the car and looked back. Only then did we notice that behind the boy was a man walking slowly. We all guessed that this was his father.  

 In fact, my uncle wasn't very angry about my cousin's injury. It was normal for kids to go out to play and get hurt. But it was hard for my uncle to accept the indifference of the boy and his father. Just as my uncle was about to step forward, Mom gently pulled him back. 

She frowned slightly, looking like she wanted to smile politely but couldn't. "Good afternoon, sir, are you that child's guardian?" My mother's voice was deep. I took my cousin's hand and clenched it a little more, not knowing why I was so nervous.  

"Well, yes, I'm his father." The "father" raised his head and touched the gold ring on his index finger with a look of disdain. God knows how many times I vomited in my heart "rich is great?" I was so disgusted by his actions. 

 "Your kid just hit our kid on a bike, I think you should ask him to apologize, right?" Mom's tone was still not angry or irritable, but full of peace. Swish a leaf spun and landed on my shoulder. I didn’t know why the leaf scratched my skin like a blade. It hurt. Itchy. The atmosphere was quiet. I picked up the leaf from my shoulder and pinched it with my fingernails, because the silence was so overwhelming that I couldn't breathe. 

The man looked at my mother coldly. He could see faint impatience from the corners of his eyes and brows, "Listen lady, we have somewhere to be. Please get out of my way." My mother stood there, shocked, as he walked around her and left without looking back. 

By Shaomeng (Mandy) Qiu (7B) 

Year 8 Poetry Portfolio Unit 

Students created a portfolio of poems experimenting with poetic features and different poem forms. The following is an excerpt from an impressive larger student portfolio and is a bredlik poem which deliberately includes absurdism and subverts traditional spellings.  

“my nayme is Croc 

my skayls are green 

i like to ete 

i am cute beane 

but wen I bord 

i use my hed 

hold up the food 

i am wel fed” 

– Anonymous 

Year 9 Ideologies Unit

Creating their own ideology, students prepared and presented a speech attempting to persuade their peers to adopt their way of seeing the world.  

Around the world, almost every country bars people under 18 from voting. But we think that should be changed. 

We’d like to introduce you to our ideology, voteism. It has one core principle: The belief that you should be eligible to vote from the age of 15. 

It’s very simple. As a supporter of this ideology, you don’t need to commit to anything. No outlandish requirements of eating vegemite for breakfast, lunch and dinner. No commitment to changing the world on an unattainable scale. All you have to do is say yes to the idea that someone our age should have the right to vote. The right to be heard. The point is people our age aren’t allowed to vote, but we think they should be. 15-year-olds are old enough to pay tax, be contributing members of society yet not old enough to have the same rights as those who contribute just as much. We are old enough to be sent to jail, but not old enough to have a say in the laws that send us there.  We are the future, but don’t get a say in it.  A bit cliché but it is true. 

Young people have adult responsibilities but are denied the same rights. In 2012/13, Australians under 18 paid $41 million in taxes. A prime example of taxation without representation. People our age are working, volunteering within society, contributing to household incomes, even joining the military, and soon we’ll be learning to drive. It is pretty obvious that people under 18 are contributing, active members of society, yet the voting age doesn’t reflect that. To the government system, we are just kids. Too immature, too uneducated, too uninterested. But that is far from the truth. 

We are capable of things most adults never achieve in their lifetimes.  People under 18 are able to win a Nobel prize, reach the summit of Mount Everest, conduct cancer research, become published authors, work for NASA, compete in the Olympic games, and yet we are still not allowed to vote.  Surely, if we are capable of such incredible accomplishments, which require levels of dedication, intelligence and skill far beyond what it takes to vote, it is within our capacities to simply nominate our candidate of choice. 

Secondly, our voting system has already experienced a multitude of changes, so what is stopping it from progressing again? 

When women wanted the vote, for example, people argued that they weren’t as educated as men, weren’t as smart, and wouldn’t vote as well.  They also argued that they’d just vote however their husbands told them, so there was no need for them to vote. 

These are the precise reasons why people under 18 are prevented from voting.  Not as educated, not as smart, won’t vote as well. Will just vote for whoever their parents tell them to. 

But history tells us that giving women the vote was always the right decision, and as the saying goes, history often repeats itself.  Giving 15-year-olds the vote will be the right decision too.  We are equally important members of society and deserve the right to have a say in how our country is run. 

Lastly, it is our generation that will shoulder the consequences of the decisions that the current voters make. In failing to address climate change, voters and politicians are damaging the world we will live in.  They have made financial commitments that we’ll be on the hook to pay back, and they’ve started wars that will affect us for years to come. It is our generation that has to pay for this, not the elderly who are about to kick the bucket anyway. 

So why are outdated, fossilised beliefs fuelling our democracy, when the opinions that truly matter are dismissed without a second glance? 

 After all of this, after so many reasons why we should be allowed to vote, there is the inevitable question. What if we don’t want to vote? 

Well, there is an easy fix for this – you don’t have to.  From ages 15-17 voting is voluntary and from 18 plus compulsory. So, if you’re sitting here bored to death, if you couldn’t care less about politics, you can stay on this side of the picture.  Now, this may seem counter-intuitive, telling you that you don’t have to vote when our whole ideology revolves around the idea of people our age voting – but that’s the whole point. We should have a choice. 

To reiterate, 15-year-olds deserve the right to vote. We are already contributing significantly to society, the voting system needs to change with the times and it’s our future that we’re voting for. 

So, vote for voteism and we’ll bring you the change you might not want, but one you certainly need. 

 – Anonymous  

Year 11 Literature Unit 2 Area of Study 2: Exploring connections 

Students compared Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night to Nunn’s 1990s film adaptation. They created their own focal question, narrowing the scope of their response to an aspect of the texts they were interested in.  

Question: How does the illustration of love and its manifestations drive the events of Twelfth Night?  

Shakespeare begins his play, Twelfth Night, with the passionate lament of a Petrarchan lover. The lyrical order, “If music be the food of love, play on”, written in iambic pentameter introduces Orsino, the Duke of Illyria to be a man transfixed by his own love. His desire is further conveyed in the follow up that is the first monologue in the play, the discourse particle “O” in “O, it came o’er to my ear like a sweet sound…” and “O spirit of love, how quick and fresh art thou…” create a rounder overall sound and increase the assonance within Orsino’s monologue. Shakespeare’s lyricism within these lines ascribe the qualities of yearning and longing to Orsino’s words, and, when read in conjunction to the subsequent “O, when mine eyes did see Olivia first… That instant I was turn’d into a hart…” Olivia is then identified as the figure towards which Orsino projects his desire. Where Orsino then states “[his] desires, like fell and cruel hounds,| [had] E’er since pursue [him],”  Shakespeare uses a simile to liken the desire of love to the primal, unrelenting and tireless nature of “fell and cruel hounds” in pursuit. In the film adaptation, viewers are introduced to a lounging Orsino through a slow and lethargic zooming in of the camera. This, coupled with Stephen’s unsympathetic portrayal of Orsino, fraught with sharp and petty inflections in vocal tone, bring out Orsino’s solipsism -emerging from perhaps both a characteristic propensity and his suffering. When Orsino then orders Cesario to “Be clamorous, and leap all civil bounds,| Rather than make unprofited return,” with regard to wooing Olivia, his selfishness is accentuated through his willingness to abandon “civil” etiquette in order to romance Olivia. Nunn thus frames Orsino’s condition as debilitating and potentially detestable in the eyes of a modern audience, despite a mere humorous play off as likely interpreted by an Elizabethan audience. Nunn thereby presents the sway of infatuation to be a visceral compulsion over which individuals have no control.  

 Moreover, this fatal attraction is similarly observed in Viola as she, disguised as Cesario, must navigate the tumult of her feelings for Orsino alone. Through her love, Shakespeare reveals the “barful strife” she must endure whereas Viola, she elects to compromise her happiness by helping Orsino woo Olivia in order to win Orsino’s favour. That said, Nunn’s adaptation provides Viola with a greater incentive to win Orsino’s favour, a looming military presence - yet despite Nunn’s call to increase the believability of his adaptation, Viola’s yearning and internal suffering is not muted and remains the subject of viewers’ attention. In both the original play and Nunn’s adaptation, Shakespeare has Viola unveil the nature of her love through yet another simile, where Viola describes the “concealment [of her love]” to be “like a worm I’ th’ bud,| [Feeding] on her damask cheek.” This figurative language provides a rather morbid image of decaying flesh, specifically that of a maiden’s cheek and, more significantly, the culprit of such marring is identified to be “her love”. In this manner, Shakespeare illustrates love in itself to be an antagonising force, destructive and tortuous in its wake. This perception of love is heightened in the adaptation as Nunn capitalises on the conceit of love and the sea, where roaring waves, volatile and violent in nature, crashing against tall cliffs form the backdrop to Viola’s assertion. Shakespeare thus imparts that the repression of love is always to the detriment of the individual, regardless of circumstance. With consideration to the Elizabethan era, such a notion may have resonated with individuals privy to the prospect of forbidden romantic love, eliciting empathy for the love-stricken; for a modern audience, in a climate wherein longing and desire is more openly addressed, similar empathy may be elicited to a lesser degree.  

Conversely, in spite of the antagonising role love is depicted to play in Twelfth Night – Shakespeare concludes his comedy by pairing off Orsino and Viola, Olivia and Sebastian and Sir Toby and Maria. On further inspection in Nunn’s adaptation, the pairing of Sir Toby and Maria is seemingly instigated by Feste as he sings a “contagious breath”. The lyrics of his song “O mistress mine… your true love’s coming,” and “then come kiss me… |Youth’s a stuff will not endure” is visually shown to resonate with Maria as her gaze remains steadily impassive during the song. Nunn thus imparts that Maria senses a correlation between her youth and her chances of finding her “true love”, believing that as she ages, such chances diminish. Her resolute, almost dispassionate expression can then be seen as fearful of the tragedy that would be if she were to never meet her “true love”.  To finalise his interpretation, Nunn’s adaptation concludes by celebrating the three marriages through festive dancing backed by an uplifting and jovial tune appropriate to a wedding of the Victorian Era. Using this in conjunction with Maria’s earlier concern, Nunn forwards the notion that love, consecrated as marriage, is an ultimatum of which individuals cannot truly be complete without. This ending explores the viability of true romantic love as the foundation of marriage and, the fact that this ending is also framed in a positive light in both the original text and the adaptation, further suggests that both Shakespeare and Nunn endorse this concept.  

Love, painted to be the root of both the greatest suffering and the greatest joy, acts as a force of compulsion and of opposition to the characters of Twelfth Night. Unveiling both the torment and the exultation of romantic love, Shakespeare embraces the at the time progressive concept of romantic love consolidated in marriage – an approach that is, although guiding of Nunn’s interpretation, gently altered to accommodate for greater caution surrounding love that “can give no place, bide no denay.” 

By Miko Tay (11Z)