Cronulla High School student Mason Boudville, 18, has looked at plenty of HSC English Advanced past papers and says most exam questions are typically entirely predictable.

“They seem to ask the same question, in a different font, every year,” he said.

But when Mason, along with 60,000 other students, opened the English Paper 2 exam on Friday morning, he discovered examiners had managed to surprise him with a question about whether Jane Austen’s Emma had a good ending.

“It wasn’t something I was necessarily prepared for, purely because I have never seen a question like that.”

Students were asked: “In what ways are these closing paragraphs an effective resolution to the narrative tensions explored in Austen’s Emma ?”

Sienna Morrison, 18, also realised it posed a challenge. “It wasn’

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