Morisset High School

English (Standard) and English

(Advanced)
Area of Study: Discovery

General Instructions
Reading time 10 minutes
Working time 2 hours
Write using black or blue pen

Total marks - 45
Section I - 15 marks
Allow about 40 minutes for this section
Section II - 15 marks
Allow about 40 minutes for this section
Section III - 15 marks
Allow about 40 minutes for this section
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Section I
15 marks
Attempt Question1
Allow about 40 minutes for this section
In your answers you will be assessed on how well you:
demonstrate understanding of the way perceptions of discovery are shaped in
and through texts
describe, explain and analyse the relationship between language, text and
context
_______________________________________________________________________________________
______________________________
Question 1 (15 marks)
Examine texts one, two
and three carefully and
then answer the questions
on page 7

Text One - Poster

Text two Feature Article

Finding Vivian Maier

By MiNDFOOD | SEPTEMBER 18, 2014

Her work was discovered by accident and today she is considered one of the great
street photographers of the twentieth century with exhibitions around the world,
expensive artworks on display in galleries and the film Finding Vivian Maier shedding
light on her mysterious life.
Vivian Maier lived a quiet and unassuming life working as a nanny in the North Shore
suburbs of Chicago. From the 1950s on and over the course of three decades she
took more than 100,000 photos of everyday urban scenes, mainly in Chicago and New
York, and left most of them undeveloped in a storage unit.
If it wasnt for young hobby historian John Maloof, who bought an unmarked box of
undeveloped negatives at an auction house in 2007, its likely no one would have ever
heard about her art.
Once he started scanning these negatives and posting them online to overwhelmingly
positive comments, he realised he had unearthed something rare and special a
photographer who not only had a great eye for framing, light and environment but
also a fantastic sense of human warmth, humour and tragedy.
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Fast forward seven years and today a renowned New York art gallery is dealing Maiers
art. Limited print editions of her photographs sell for thousands of dollars, several
books about her work have been published and an exhibition with selected artworks is
travelling the world.
If Maier, who died poor and alone in a nursing home in April 2009, unaware of her
soon to rise star, would approve of all this we will never know. As a photographer
she seems to have been relentless in her hunt for potential photographic subjects but
her personality also had an extremely secretive and secluded side.
The film Finding Vivian Maier documents the amazing discovery of her legacy and
delivers a thrilling portrait of an extremely talented artist living a secretive and
mysterious life. Using every-day items that Maier had collected and left in storage the
filmmakers unearth information about the photographer that often surprises those
who thought they knew her best.
Finding Vivian Maier comes to cinemas in Australia and New Zealand on November 6
and Vivian Maiers work will be shown for the first time in Australasia at the Centre For
Contemporary Photography in Melbourne as part of the prestigious Melbourne Festival
in October 2014.

END OF TEXT TWO

Text Three Novel Extract Life of Pi by Yann Martel (pages 175 177)
Richard Parker sat up. Only his head and a little of his shoulders showed above the
gunnel. He looked out. I shouted, Hello, Richard Parker! and I waved. He looked at
me. He snorted or sneezed, neither word quite captures it. Prusten again. What a
stunning creature. Such a noble mien. How apt that in full it is a Royal Bengal tiger. I
counted myself lucky in a way. What if I had ended up with a creature that looked silly
or ugly, a tapir or an ostrich or a flock of turkeys? That would have been a more trying
companionship in some ways.
I heard a splash. I looked down at the water. I gasped. I thought I was alone. The
stillness in the air, the glory of the light, the feeling of comparative safety all had
made me think so. There is commonly an element of silence and solitude to peace,
isnt there? Its hard to imagine being at peace in a busy subway station, isnt it? So
what was all this commotion?
With just one glance I discovered that the sea is a city. Just below me, all around,
unsuspected by me, were highways, boulevards, streets and roundabouts bustling
with submarine traffic. In water that was dense, glassy and flecked by millions of lit-up
specks of plankton, fish like trucks and buses and cars and bicycles and pedestrians
were madly racing about, no doubt honking and hollering at each other. The
predominant colour was green. At multiple depths, as far as I could see, there were
evanescent trails of phosphorescent green bubbles, the wake of speeding fish. As
soon as one trail faded, another appeared. These trails came from all direction and
disappeared in all directions. They were like those time-exposure photographs you see
of cities at night, with the long red streaks made by the tail lights of cars. Except that
here the cars were driving above and under each other as if they were on
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interchanges that were stacked ten storeys high. And here the cars were the craziest
colours. The dorados there must have been over fifty patrolling beneath the raft
showed off their bright gold, blue and green as they whisked by. Other fish that I could
not identify were yellow, brown, silver, blue, red, pink, green white, in all kinds of
combinations, solid, streaked and speckled. Only the sharks stubbornly refused to be
colourful. But whatever the size or colour of a vehicle, one thing was constant: the
furious driving. There were many collisions all involving fatalities, Im afraid and a
number of cars spun wildly out of control and collided against barriers, bursting above
the surface of the water and splashing down in showers of luminescence. I gazed
upon this urban hurly-burly like someone observing a city from a hot-air balloon. It
was a spectacle wondrous and awe-inspiring. This is surely what Tokyo must look like
in rush hour.
I looked on until the lights went out in the city.
I awoke once during the night. I pushed the canopy aside and looked out. The moon
was sharply defined crescent and the sky was perfectly clear. The stars shone with
such fierce, contained brilliance that it seemed absurd to call the night dark. The sea
lay quietly, bathed in a shy, light-footed light, a dancing play of black and silver that
extended without limits all about me. The volume of things was confounding the
volume of air above me, the volume of water around and beneath me. I was halfmoved, half-terrified. I felt like the sage Markandeya, who fell out of Vishnus mouth
while Vishnu was sleeping and so beheld the entire universe, everything that there is.
Before the sage could die of fright, Vishnu awoke and took him back into his mouth.
For the first time I noticed as I would notice repeatedly during my ordeal, between
one throe of agony and the next that my suffering was taking place in a grand
setting. I saw my suffering for what it was, finite and insignificant, and I was still. My
suffering did not fit anywhere, I realised. And I could accept this. I was all right.
END OF TEXT THREE

In your answers you will be assessed on how well you:

demonstrate understanding of the way perceptions of discovery are shaped in
and through texts
describe, explain and analyse the relationship between language, text and
context
_______________________________________________________________________________________
______________________________
Question 1 (continued)
TextonePoster
a) Explain how the title of the poster connects to the images and information
presented (3 marks)

TexttwoFeaturearticle

b) Discuss how the writers representation of Vivian Maier provokes thought and
wonder (3 marks)
Text three Fiction extract
c) In what ways does the novel extract highlight the connection between
imagination and understanding? (3 marks)

Text one, Text two or Text three Poster, Feature article, Fiction extract
d) Analyse how the relationship between discovery and curiosity is portrayed
effectively in ONE of these texts. (6 marks)
Answer with reference to Text one OR Text two OR Text three.

EndofQuestion1

Section II
15 marks
Attempt Question 2
Allow about 40 minutes for this section

In your answer you will be assessed on how well you:

express understanding of discovery in the context of your studies
organise, develop and express ideas using language appropriate to audience,
purpose and context
_______________________________________________________________________________________
______________________________
Question 2 (15 marks)

Use ONE of the sentences below as the opening for a piece of writing that focuses on
the role of wonder in the process of discovery.

My mind was a crystal vase that contained only one desire.

OR
I stood and let the wind blow the sage leaves from my hands and walked to the edge
of the flat area I was occupying.
OR

The door was open. I hid around the corner to look upon the scene.

Section III
15 marks
Attempt Question 3
Allow about 40 minutes for this section.

In your answer you will be assessed on how well you:

demonstrate understanding of the concept of discovery in the context of your
studies
analyse, explain and assess the ways discovery is represented in a variety of
texts
oraganise, develop and express ideas using language appropriate to audience,
purpose and context.
_______________________________________________________________________________________
______________________________

Discoveries are often evoked by curiosity, necessity or wonder.

How accurately does this statement reflect the ideas represented in your prescribed
text and ONE other related text of your own choosing?
Prescribed text:
Advanced: Robert Frost. The Tuft of Flowers, Mending Wall, Home Burial, After
Apple-Picking, Fire and Ice, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.
Standard: Michael Gow, Away.

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