HSC English Advanced Past Papers: Every Module, 2019–2025

Every HSC English Advanced paper since the current course began in 2019 is free on the NESA website, with its marking guidelines and a page of markers’ feedback. Taken together, they show how each section has actually been examined. We opened all fourteen papers from 2019 to 2025, recorded each section’s question type, marks and stimulus, and charted what seven years show.

This is a record of the past, not a forecast. NESA changes the style of questions from year to year, and nothing here tells you what the next paper will ask.

Which syllabus this covers (updated 10 October 2026): Every paper on this page was set on the 2017 English Advanced syllabus, which the 2026 HSC examines for the last time. Students sitting the HSC from 2027 study the new English Advanced 11–12 syllabus and a new prescribed text list, but NESA’s exam specifications keep the same layout: Paper 1 is two 20-mark sections in 1 hour 30 minutes plus 10 minutes reading time, and Paper 2 is three 20-mark sections in 2 hours plus 5 minutes reading time. Source: NSW Curriculum, English Advanced HSC examination specifications.

Key Takeaways

• NESA publishes every English Advanced paper, marking guideline and marking feedback page for 2019–2025. We link them all; we do not re-host them.
• The structure never moved: Paper 1 is 40 marks (two 20-mark sections), Paper 2 is 60 marks (Modules A, B and C at 20 each).
• Paper 1 Section I had five questions in six of the seven years, a poem every year and a visual text in three.
• The Common Module essay was one question for every text in five years and text-specific in two.
• Module C was two parts in five years and one 20-mark task in two, with splits from 10/10 to 5/15.
• Markers’ feedback repeats one message every year: answer every part of the question and analyse rather than describe. Most years it also warns against forcing a prepared response onto a question it does not fit. Our guide to answering HSC English short answer questions turns that feedback into a method for Section I.

What Will You Learn in This Guide?

• Where Can You Download NESA English Advanced Past Papers?
• What Is the HSC English Advanced Exam Structure?
• How Has Each Module Been Examined From 2019 to 2025?
• How Has HSC English Advanced Paper 1 Changed?
• How Has HSC English Advanced Paper 2 Changed?
• How Should You Use English Advanced Past Papers?
• Frequently Asked Questions

Where Can You Download NESA English Advanced Past Papers?

Every link below goes straight to the NSW Education Standards Authority (NESA). The papers are NESA’s copyright, so we link the official copies rather than hosting our own. Each year’s marking feedback sits on its exam pack page, under “Marking feedback”.

Papers before 2019 belong to the previous course and sit in NESA’s separate English Advanced archive. They still suit unseen-text practice, but the modules were different.

Did You Know? The 2019–2025 papers were all set on the same prescribed text list. NESA extended the current English prescriptions to cover the HSC up to and including 2026, and a new list, alongside the new English Advanced 11–12 syllabus, is first examined in the 2027 HSC. Sources: NESA notice 14/24 on the extension to 2026, NESA notice 53/24 on the 2027–2028 prescriptions and the English Advanced 11–12 Syllabus (2024) overview.

So every paper above uses the texts a 2026 student is studying. If you sit the HSC in 2027 or later, the papers are still good timed reading and writing practice, but your syllabus and prescribed texts will differ. The four Year 12 areas of study keep their current names, now called focus areas.

What Is the HSC English Advanced Exam Structure?

The shape of the exam was identical in every paper from 2019 to 2025. What changed is the question inside each section, which the rest of this guide tracks.

How Has Each Module Been Examined From 2019 to 2025?

Two things changed most from year to year: whether you were given a stimulus, and whether every student answered the same question.

The pattern of the last seven years is variety. A plan that covers only one form in any row has been caught out before. For each cell in words, open the full table.

How Has HSC English Advanced Paper 1 Changed?

Paper 1 is the Common Module, Texts and Human Experiences. Every English Advanced student sits the same unseen texts in Section I, which makes it the fairest place to practise from past papers.

Section I: Short Answers on Unseen Texts

Marks per question stayed between 3 and 6, and the heaviest question usually came last. A poem appeared in all seven papers, prose fiction in six, and a memoir or other nonfiction extract in every paper. The visual text (an illustration or a photograph) was always paired with a written text: read together in 2020, compared in 2022 and 2024. In 2019 the two-text question was a “to what extent” judgement across the feature article and one other text. Command words ranged from “explain” and “how does” through “analyse” to “assess”, “evaluate” and “compare”, and the marks follow the verb.

What markers rewarded: every sentence tied to the exact idea named in the question, evidence that proves that idea, and doing what the key verb asks. In 2024 the feedback singled out students who did not understand what “assess” requires, and asked for proper comparative language in the comparison question.

What cost marks: retelling what happens in the text, and naming techniques without showing how they build the idea the question asks about.

For the method, start with our short answer formula, then the dedicated guides to unseen prose, unseen visual texts and 5-mark mini essays.

Section II: The Common Module Essay

The year-by-module chart shows one shared question in five years. In 2019 each text had its own question naming a different concept; in 2022 each text had its own wording but the same underlying idea, about the features of the text’s form. Only 2023 gave a quoted statement; every other year put the idea directly into the question. The verbs moved around: “to what extent” (2019, 2023), “how effectively” (2020), “analyse how” (2021, 2025), “how does” (2022) and “in what ways” (2024).

What markers rewarded: engaging with every part of the question, a sustained and personal line of argument, evidence drawn from across the whole text, and the language of the text’s form (film terms for a film, dramatic terms for a play).

To see how our tutors answer this form of question, read our Band 6 Common Module essay on The Crucible, colour-coded sentence by sentence.

How Has HSC English Advanced Paper 2 Changed?

Paper 2 is three separate 20-mark tasks in two hours, and it is where the question style has moved the most.

Module A: Textual Conversations

Module A swung both ways in the year-by-module chart: one shared question in four years and a question per pair in three. Extracts came one from each text in 2021 and one per pair in 2022, and in 2025 each pair’s question named its own concept instead of giving a stimulus. Whatever the stimulus, the questions kept returning to how the earlier and later texts relate to each other.

What markers rewarded: a balanced treatment of both texts, context woven into the analysis rather than bolted on, and evaluation of how form, purpose and context shape the conversation between the texts. When extracts were provided, markers expected them to be used explicitly.

To see how our tutors answer this form of question, read our Module A Band 6 essay on Hag-Seed and The Tempest.

Module B: Critical Study of Literature

Module B used every stimulus type in turn. The statement was a different one for each text in 2019 and one shared quotation in 2021. The 2025 extracts came from the endings of the texts (for the poetry options, the closing stanza of a named poem). Of the three years with no stimulus, 2022 named a concept for each text, while 2023 and 2024 gave every student the same evaluative question, about the text’s construction (2023) and its literary value (2024).

What markers rewarded: answering every element of the question with a personal, conceptual argument, informed by the text’s context, form and language, and supported by detailed evidence. This barely changes from one year’s feedback to the next.

What cost marks: reproducing a prepared response. The notes for individual texts flagged plot-driven responses in every year from 2019 to 2025, naming recount or retelling outright in every year except 2022.

To see how our tutors answer this form of question, read our Module B Band 6 essay on T.S. Eliot.

Module C: The Craft of Writing

Module C has been the least predictable section of the exam. The task, the mark split and the permitted forms all changed, though a stimulus was given every year.

What markers rewarded: making the stimulus integral to the piece, structurally or as a sustained metaphor, writing in exactly the form the question named, and in the reflection part quoting your own writing to explain or evaluate the choices behind it.

A Module C piece you can only write one way is a piece the paper can switch off with a single word in the question.

To see how our tutors answer these forms of question, read our annotated Band 6 imaginative writing example and Band 6 discursive writing example. For the method behind each form, our Module C craft of writing guide links the full guides to imaginative and discursive writing and to the reflection statement.

If you are in English Standard rather than Advanced, your Module A and Module B texts are different; start with our Module A: Language, Identity and Culture guide and our Curious Incident Module B guide. For the Standard exam itself, see our HSC English Standard past papers guide.

How Should You Use English Advanced Past Papers?

1. Sit the section, then read the feedback. Do one section under the suggested time (45 minutes for each part of Paper 1, 40 for each module in Paper 2), then read that year’s marking feedback before you mark yourself.
2. Mark against the guideline, not your memory. The marking guidelines give the criteria for each mark band, and NESA’s English Advanced standards materials show real student responses at different bands. Ask which band your answer meets, and why it is not in the one above.
3. Rehearse every form in the year-by-module chart. For each module, write at least one response to each form it has used: a statement, an extract, a named concept and a bare question. That is the practical defence against the prepared-response problem the markers keep flagging.
4. Practise Section I from every year. The unseen texts are the same for everyone, so all seven papers are fair practice whatever your prescribed texts.
5. Use the old course for reading practice. Pre-2019 papers still give good unseen texts, but their modules no longer exist.

Doing this alone works, but it is slow, because the hardest part is judging your own answer honestly. That is what our HSC English Advanced tutoring in Blacktown is built around: timed past-paper sections, marking against NESA’s guidelines, and rewriting, in classes of 1 to 5 students, with tutors averaging 97.1 ATAR. We are minutes from Blacktown Station and teach students from across Western Sydney. Check our pricing, or book a free trial with no obligations.

The Bottom Line

All fourteen English Advanced papers from 2019 to 2025 are free from NESA, and they were set on the same text list you are studying for the 2026 HSC. The structure has never changed, but the questions inside it have: shared or text-specific, statement or extract or no stimulus at all, one Module C task or two. Use the papers to practise every form each module has used, read the markers’ feedback after every attempt, and treat the variety as the lesson. The HSC isn’t easy, but by learning the right methods, you can walk into both papers ready for whatever form the question takes.

Frequently Asked Questions

If this article was helpful, you should check out:

• HSC past papers by subject: NESA’s 2019 to 2025 exam packs for English Advanced, English Standard, Biology, Chemistry and Physics, and how the exams compare
• How to Answer HSC English Short Answer Questions
• Module C: The Craft of Writing Guide
• Texts and Human Experiences Band 6 Essay Example