Advanced English

CONTENTS

Introduction…………………………………………2

Gwen Harwood: In The Park……………………….3

In the Park Analysis………………………………...4

BOS Change Booklet: The Door…………………...5

The Door Analysis………………………………….6

Supplementary Material: Man In The Mirror, Michael Jackson……………………………………………..7

Man In The Mirror Analysis……………………….11

Conclusive Statement………………………………12

Notes……………………………………………….13

      The area study “Changing” is a common area studied by all year 12 English students (Standard and Advanced). Students are required to analyse and explore texts and apply skills in synthesis. “Changing” is the exploration of a concept that affects our perceptions of our world and ourselves. This area of study entices students to explore and examine relationships between language and text, and interrelationships among texts. Students must take into account context, purpose, register, structure, stylistic features, grammatical features and vocabulary to portray this change. Students are to study the Board Of Studies booklet and one prescribed text of their choosing (from the categories of changing self, changing perspective or changing worlds), plus supplementary material.

      Gwen Harwood’s In The Park contains numerous themes relating directly to the focus area of changing self. The poem addresses the difference time and the consuming effect of family responsibilities can make in individual’s destinies. It explores a woman’s crisis of realisation, caused by a chance meeting, about the way she and her life have changed.

      In The Park was written under the pseudonym ‘Walter Lehman’. This fact is a clear example of changing self, as Harwood creates an alternative personality to herself in which to publish this work.

      A woman with no identity, in unfashionable clothes sits with, but not responding to, her children. The third child has given up trying to get her attention and ‘draws aimless patterns’, mirroring the mother’s withdrawn behaviour.

      The...