How to choose a killer related text

We all know English is the one subject you have to do.

This means that regardless of whether you’re an English fiend or haven’t touched a book since your mum last read you a bedtime story, you’re going to have to smash through a good handful of texts in your HSC year.

For the most part, the texts are chosen by your teachers from a BOSTES list. So this has the potential to be pretty cruisey. But as with everything else HSC, the Board of Studies get a real kick out of making your lives just that little bit harder and on top of all this they also make you study one or two related texts of your own choice. Joy!

So when you’re faced with the task of reading, analysing and writing on a potential 4 extra texts without some of that cheeky teacher spoonfeeding, it’s easy to feel pretty overwhelmed. So we’ve put together a series of tips to help you pick the right related text to snatch up a top range mark.

The Rules

But first, there’s two rules set by the BOSTES for related texts:

1. You can’t do a text you’re studying in another section of the English paper
2. You can’t do a text that’s on the prescribed list for any modules

And because these rules are set by our friends in high places, you can’t really break them. But you can bend them and we’ll show you how now.

Choose a text that you’ve studied in Year 11.

When year 11 doesn’t count, it might seem like you’ve put in all that hard work in English for nothing. But why not make it count by choosing one of your past texts.

You can get a kick out of recycling while saving yourself some serious time and effort on the analysis front. Plus, if you’ve studied it in class my guess is that you’ll have some gold notes from your teacher and past essays. Winning!

So, as long as the text isn’t one that breaks any of our above rules, then go for your life, dust off your year 11 folder and give your essays a nice revamp.

Pick a text with literary merit.

Even if the Hunger Games is your favourite book of all time, the reality is that it’s not really a hot favourite for critics to write essays on. And there’s a good reason for this, once you move past the Katniss, Peeta and Gale love triangle there isn’t too much of those deep, universal themes of the Human Condition that markers love.

However, if you choose texts that have won awards like the Man Booker Prize or Pulitzer Prize (aka they have literary merit) then pulling out some BS about why the curtains are blue is going to be way too easy.

Pick a text you like.

If you’re going to be slaving away at a text on your own terms then there’s no point doing one that you don’t enjoy. Thousands of studies have proven that if you’re not interested in what you’re doing, your motivation levels will inevitably hit rock bottom.

So, choose a text that you like and English will instantly be that much more fun. And don’t come back at me with a “I hate reading full stop” because there’s nothing stopping you from choosing an Oscar Winning favourite that you’ve watched enough times to quote off by heart.

Plus, there’s not many chances that you get to choose what you do in the HSC so take advantage of this one while you can!

Use a text we’ve talked about in HSC Hub videos.

Our English videos use tonnes of texts as examples and are filled with solid points of analysis. So why not borrow some of the work we’ve done and use one of them and even do a sneaky right-click-synonym on some of the stuff we’ve written about them.

Guaranteed they’re going to be texts we like, because when we’re making videos 6 hours a day we want to make it fun for ourselves.

So be sure to jump on to the site and have a watch of the English videos before deciding on your related texts for the year!

Now be sure to keep these tips in mind when choosing your related texts and I 100% guarantee that writing your essay will be half the battle you thought it was going to be.