In the lead up to their English Extension 1 exam, Normanhurst Boys High School students Lam Doan, Ronny Jo and Harry Shin taped batteries to their pens during practice papers, and squeezed putty to build hand strength.
With at least five pens in hand, they walked into Tuesday afternoon’s exam. It was the final HSC exam for the group, and had reached mythical proportions in their minds.
Normanhurst Boys High School students Harry Shin, Ronny Jo and Lam Doan after their English Extension 1 exam on Tuesday.Credit: James Brickwood
“All the other exams were done and dusted, I couldn’t do anything about them, I needed to give this one my best shot. It was my final opportunity to lift my marks up as high as I could get them,” said Lam.
With just two hours to complete two 25-mark essay questions, he said English Extension 1 was a “marathon run at a sprinters pace”.
It is certainly not a subject for the lighthearted. Around 3723 students were enrolled this year, down from 6286 two decades ago. Students pump out around 1500 words, or 14 handwritten pages, in two hours. It’s why Ronny packed so many pens.
“I’ve burnt through three of these pens already in previous exams,” he laughed.
But when they opened the exam book, panic hit Ronny and Lam: One question asked them to create a discursive piece in response to unseen text, something Ronny “did not know they could do”.
Lam agreed: “They have never asked for a discursive text on an [unseen] prescribed piece.”
A discursive text explores multiple perspectives, allowing students to include their personal voice in a response, without necessarily pushing a single point.
“The best discursive piece are the pieces of writing that offer a unique and personal insight into literature,” said Normanhurst Boys head of English Dean Stevenson, describing the text type as giving the students the chance to write in a “more casual, colloquial voice”.
But when they read the stimulus, Lam and Ronny calmed.
“After reading the stimulus and seeing it was about the reader and writer dynamic, I think that really settled my nerves a bit because that was the focus of what we had been studying in class,” said Lam.
For classmate Harry, the question was “exactly” what he wanted.
“I felt I was under-prepared for a critical response, when I saw it was a discursive, it felt good,” he said.
“I went in with a prepared piece, it was polished for like, a whole year straight. I practiced adapting to discursive and creative throughout the whole year. So I was very prepared.”
Harry’s piece was about “the ideation stage of writing”, using Seoul’s Han River as an extended metaphor. He recited it from memory after the test.
“There’s a path I walk before I write. It runs beside the Han River. It’s become a habit, almost ritual, although I pretend it’s just for air. The Han isn’t spectacular, not in the way people expect beauty to be. It is slow, slightly brown, it carries things we don’t talk about,” he said.
The 2025 HSC exams will finish on Friday.
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