Extension 1- if the Advanced English course looked at communication, you could say that this course was looking at literature, it has 9 electives of which you only get to specialise in one, however the electives are grouped into three modular divisions and these are: genre, ways of thinking, language and values. The first one, genre, studies the categories texts fall into and how they have evolved and changed according to the social values of the audience and composers to give us different conventions such as; the nosy old lady of the manor house solving who did what, the young apprentice who must go out and save the world while learning along the way or the all knowing detective such as Holmes or CSI's Gill Grissom. The second one, ways of thinking, looks at a school of thought or trend in text so to speak such as postmodernism or globalism and this module could be said to be one of the more philosophical in the HSC. The third, language and values, is essentially looking at how and why things are said the way they are and you could look at for example the social roles of the genders. When you sit the final exam for the course you will recieve 2 questions with the trend being for one analytical and one creative writing task. In the preliminary component of the course your teacher will design her/his own module, one of the more popular prelim modules has been to explore the gothic, alternative choices have been postcolonialism, romance and "the hero".
