Texts and Human Experiences (unseen texts)

Paper 1 Section I is worth 20 marks. You get a stimulus booklet of unseen texts and answer a set of short-answer questions about them. Nothing here can be memorised in advance: what you can prepare is a reliable way of reading and a reliable way of writing an answer.

• The paper: Paper 1 has 10 minutes of reading time and 1 hour 30 minutes of working time for 40 marks (Section I unseen texts, 20 marks; Section II your prescribed text essay, 20 marks). This is NESA's published structure for the new syllabus, first examined in 2027 (the same shape as the papers since 2019).
• The texts: usually four or five short texts in different forms, for example a poem, a prose fiction extract, a piece of nonfiction (memoir, feature article, speech, diary) and often an image such as a photograph, poster or cartoon.
• The questions: there will be 5 or 6 short-answer questions (some may have parts). In recent papers they have been worth about 3 to 6 marks each, and the last one is usually the largest and often asks you to compare or bring together two texts.
• The topic: every text represents some human experience, and every question asks how the composer represents it. The marks are for the "how", tied to the experience.

What the module is about

Texts and human experiences is the common module, shared with English Standard. In your own words, it asks you to think about:

• how texts represent individual and collective experiences, such as belonging, loss, work, memory, love, fear or change;
• the qualities and emotions people show in those experiences;
• the contradictions and paradoxes in why people act as they do, including the tension between acting for yourself and conforming to others (someone who loves another person but cannot say so; someone who is proud of a job they resent);
• how texts represent identity, acceptance and growth;
• how a text can challenge your assumptions and make you reflect on your own experience.

Those ideas give you the vocabulary for the "experience" half of an answer. The techniques give you the "how" half. A good answer always has both.

You cannot write during the 10 minutes of reading time, but you can do most of the thinking.

1. Read the questions first, not the texts. Note which text each question is about and what each one asks (an idea? a technique? a comparison?).
2. Read each text once for the gist: who is speaking, to whom, about what, and how it feels.
3. Re-read the texts for the bigger questions, especially the final comparative one, and mentally pick two or three quotations for each.
4. Decide your order. Most students answer in order, but if one text grabs you, it is fine to start there and come back.

Do not spend reading time trying to understand every line of a difficult poem. Questions usually point you to a part of the text, and you only need enough to answer them.

Work through four questions. They turn a confusing text into material you can use.

1. What kind of text is it? Form, purpose and audience. A speech persuades a live audience; a diary is private; a poem compresses feeling into images.
2. What experience does it represent? Put it in a phrase: "the loneliness of caring for someone", "pride mixed with grief". Look for a shift: many texts turn at a particular line or paragraph.
3. How is that experience shaped? Find the techniques that carry the feeling. Look at word choice first (it is always there), then imagery, sound, structure and voice.
4. So what? What does the text suggest about people more broadly? That last step is what lifts a 2-mark answer to a full-mark one.

Technique toolkit

The point is never to name a technique for its own sake. Name it only so you can explain what it does.

For images, use visual terms: salience (what your eye goes to first), vectors (lines that lead your eye, including a subject's gaze), framing and angle (high angle makes a subject smaller or vulnerable; low angle gives power), colour and lighting, composition (foreground and background, empty space) and any written text in the image.

Each short answer should do the same four things, as many times as the marks require:

1. Answer the question in your first sentence. Use its key words. "The poet represents the father's work as a quiet act of love."
2. Quote briefly. A few words is usually best. Integrate the quotation into your own sentence.
3. Name the technique and explain its effect. Not "this is a metaphor" but "the metaphor of ... suggests ...".
4. Link back to the human experience. What does it show about this person, or about people?

How long?

Quality beats quantity. Markers reward precise analysis, so three sharp sentences on one image can be worth more than a list of five devices.

Here is an original short poem (not from any exam) and a question of the kind you will see.

Saturday Call (poem)

My grandmother holds the tablet like a tray, too far, then too close, her face arriving in pieces — an eye, a cheek, the ceiling of her flat in Ipoh. She shouts because the distance feels like noise. I tell her I am well. She tells me to eat. We talk about the weather in two seasons. When the screen freezes, she keeps smiling in case I can still see.

Question: How does the poet represent the experience of staying connected across distance? (3 marks)

Sample answer: The poet represents long-distance connection as clumsy but deeply loving. The fragmented image of the grandmother's face "arriving in pieces — an eye, a cheek" uses the dash and the listing of body parts to show how technology breaks a familiar person into parts, suggesting that the connection is real but incomplete. The short, parallel sentences "I tell her I am well. She tells me to eat." show the conversation shrinking to simple rituals, yet the grandmother's instruction to eat reveals care that does not need complicated words. Finally, the closing image of her smiling "in case I can still see" makes her love outlast the frozen screen, so the poem suggests that the effort to connect matters more than how well it works.

Why this earns full marks: it answers in the first sentence, uses three short integrated quotations, names the techniques (fragmented imagery, parallel syntax, final image) and explains what each shows about the experience. The last sentence lifts to a bigger idea.

A weaker version would say: "The poet uses imagery and short sentences to show the grandmother. This makes the reader feel sad." That names techniques but does not explain how they work or what experience they show, and "makes the reader feel sad" is not about the text at all.

The final question usually asks you to compare or bring two texts together. Use the poem above with this original prose extract.

Departures (prose fiction extract)

Dad drove me to the airport in the old ute, both of us facing forward. He talked about the traffic, the price of parking, whether the plane would leave on time. At the drop-off zone he got out, lifted my suitcase from the tray and set it on the kerb as carefully as if it held eggs. "Right," he said. Then he checked the tyres, all four, though we had only driven forty minutes. I watched him crouch beside the last one, pressing it with his thumb, and understood that this was the speech.

Question: Compare how the poem and the prose extract represent the gap between what people feel and what they say. (5 marks)

Sample answer: Both texts suggest that love between family members is often expressed through small actions and routines rather than direct words, but the poem frames this gap as funny and tender while the extract makes it quietly painful. In the poem, the exchange "I tell her I am well. She tells me to eat." uses parallel syntax to reduce the conversation to ritual, yet the grandmother's command carries her care. Similarly, in the extract the father's talk about "the traffic, the price of parking" is a list of safe, practical topics that fills the silence where his feelings should be. The texts differ in how they resolve the gap. The poem ends on the grandmother's visible smile, an image of love made obvious. The extract instead relies on the simile "as carefully as if it held eggs" and the detail of checking "all four" tyres to make the father's actions carry his emotion, and the final realisation, "this was the speech", turns the whole scene into an unspoken farewell. Together, the texts show that what people cannot say often finds its way into what they do.

What makes this comparative: the thesis covers both texts in one sentence, linking words ("Similarly", "differ", "instead", "Together") keep both in view, and there are specific techniques from each. The answer does not write about the poem and then, separately, about the extract.

Paper 1 gives you 90 minutes for 40 marks, which is 2.25 minutes per mark. Using that rate:

Many students aim for about 40 minutes on Section I, which leaves a little extra for the essay. The danger is spending too long on the first two questions because they feel easy. Write the time you should finish each question next to it on the paper and stick to it. If you run out of time on a question, write one more clear sentence that links your evidence to the experience, then move on.

• Feature spotting. Listing "metaphor, alliteration, imagery" without explaining what each does. Every technique needs an effect.
• Vague effects. "This engages the reader" or "creates imagery" says nothing. Say what the reader understands or feels, and why.
• Retelling the text. Paraphrasing what happens is not analysis. If a sentence would still make sense without a quotation and a technique, it probably isn't earning marks.
• Ignoring the question's key words. If the question asks about "the final stanza" or "a sense of hope", answer about that, not the whole text in general.
• Long quotations. Copying three lines wastes time. Quote the four or five words that carry the technique.
• Writing too much for small questions. A 3-mark answer does not need an introduction.
• For images: describing only. "There is a girl in the corner" is description. "The girl is placed in the bottom corner with empty space above her, which emphasises her isolation" is analysis.
• Forgetting the human experience. The common module is about experiences. End your answer with what the text shows about people.

• "How does..." wants technique plus effect, tied to the idea in the question.
• "Explain" wants cause and effect: how the technique produces the meaning.
• "Analyse" wants you to break the text into parts (techniques, structure) and show how they work together.
• "Compare" wants similarities and differences, ideally both.
• "Evaluate" or "to what extent" wants a judgement. Say how well or how far, and justify it.
• Markers are looking for a clear response to the question, well-chosen evidence, accurate analysis of how language shapes meaning, and control of expression. Fluent, precise sentences matter.
• If two texts are in a final question, give each a fair share of the answer. A response that barely mentions the second text cannot reach the top marks.
• Underline the key words of each question during the working time before you start writing.
• Practise with unfamiliar texts every week: the skill is transferable, and speed comes from repetition.

• Texts and human experiences (prescribed text essay): Section II of the same paper uses the same ideas about human experience, applied to your prescribed text. The analytical sentence pattern here (claim, quotation, technique, effect, link) is the same one you use in essay paragraphs.
• The craft of writing: the techniques you analyse in unseen texts are the ones you should use in your own writing. Noticing how a professional writer creates an effect is the fastest way to learn to create it yourself.
• Textual conversations and Critical study of literature: both need the same close analysis, sustained across a whole text.