Grammar Gazette- Issue 1, 2018

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Year 8 English students discuss a text.

texts to use—women’s agency in Jane Eyre or Pride and Prejudice and the excellent recent film adaptation of Brooklyn ? Haves and Have Nots in The Great Gatsby and the thought-provoking documentary Park Avenue ? What it is to be post-human in Never Let Me Go and Bladerunner ? The second unit is even more obviously designed to place students in the conversational fold. They will produce persuasive speeches arising from their studies of the media’s treatment of topical, global issues. This very deliberate focus on conversation is—in the broadest sense—a rite of passage. It is an invitation to our girls to make the transition from the kids’ table to the grown-ups’. They do it well, and we in the English Faculty are confident that Girls Grammar’s young women will head out into the world with alacrity, ready to address the scarcity problem to which our friend Mr Capote so wittily and aptly referred.

Monsieur Lacan, but in terms of Bronte’s depiction of feminised madness, I align more closely with our friend Monsieur Foucault’s position. What do you think, Mme de Bueauvoir? Ms Butler?’. The process of migrating to the adults’ table starts early in our classes. Last year, Year 8 students got their conversational call-up by participating in a unit on refugees. They studied a wide range of texts relating to this most pressing and profound of global issues, and then produced their written or spoken text, in response to what they had found. Units and tasks like this one are vital not only to the girls’ development as informed and lucid contributors to the big conversation, but also to their sense of agency and empowerment, fully entitled to form, hold and present a viewpoint. I was privileged to be on the team that wrote the new English Syllabus that our current Year 10 students will be the first to complete in 2019 and 2020, and can report without breaching any Chatham House rules, that the notion of Queensland students participating in big conversations was central to our ruminations. The very first unit of Year 12 is called ‘Conversations about Concepts in Texts’ and the second is called ‘Conversations about Issues in Texts’. The former looks at a big idea that has been explored in two literary texts. Students analyse and reflect on these contributions to the big chat from their own 2020 points of view. We in the English Faculty are currently having our own conversations about which ideas and which

REFERENCES Montaigne, M. D., & Screech, M. A. (2004). The essays: a selection. London: Penguin. Austen, J., Kinsley, J., & Lynch, D. S. (2004). Persuasion. Oxford: Oxford University.

AUTUMN ISSUE / 2018