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MODULE A: Genre
This module requires students to explore and evaluate notions of genre. It develops their understanding of the conventions and values associated with generic forms. (Reread English Stage 6 Syllabus 
, p 89)
Introduction to Elective 1: Life Writing
In this elective students explore nonfictional texts composed in a range of media that represent lives or aspects of lives. Texts such as biographies, autobiographies, memoirs and documentaries explore a life and may at the same time examine the recording of that life. Many examples of life writing interrogate whether there can ever be a comprehensive account of the facts of a life. They explore instead the various ways in which the facts of a life can be represented, interpreted and valued. Although these texts sometimes include fictional elements they are characteristically nonfictional accounts.
In this elective, students are required to study at least three of the prescribed texts, two of which must be print texts, as well as other texts of their own choosing. In their responding and composing they explore, analyse, experiment with and critically evaluate their prescribed texts and a range of other examples of this life writing genre. They explore the diversity within the life writing genre in a range of texts and contexts.
Nonfiction
- Modjeska, Drusilla, The Orchard, Picador, 1995, ISBN-13: 9780330356558
- Blixen, Karen, Out of Africa, Penguin, 2003, ISBN-13: 9780141183336
- Auster, Paul, The Invention of Solitude, Faber/Allen & Unwin, 2006, ISBN-13: 9780571227273
or
Poetry
- Lowell, Robert, Life Studies, Faber/Allen & Unwin, 2005, ISBN-13: 9780571207749
‘Grandparents’, ‘Commander Lowell’, ‘Terminal Days at Beverly Farms’, ‘Sailing from Rapallo’, ‘Memories of West Street and Lepke’, ‘Man and Wife’, ‘Skunk Hour’, ‘Waking in the Blue’
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