They seem quite different actually. I haven't done Ext. Eng. yet, so I'm not really equipped to comment. But perhaps a parallel is that both "genres" focus on only one-two characters, with minimal supporting characters. I don't know.
Edit: Who am I going to have for Modern? Fenech! Well, hopefully. I had him for Year 9 History and he was the best teacher. He would give me 10/10 for bookwork when there were like 3-4 exercises missing, lol.
But he said to out class (9 HIST A) last year, "You'll learn about blah blah blah in Modern History, and if you do Modern History you might have me for it." I agree, Mrs Sewell is awesome. She did actually talk about publishing a book last year, but somewhat jokingly, saying that she'd write about how horrible we (9 ENG 1) were or something like that. It was such a breath of fresh air to have Mrs Sewell after having Miss Carlino for Year 8 (all boys class) English, when the class was uncontrollable. Mrs Sewell knows how to get you to shut up. I think she finds me somewhat annoying though, as I would often turn up late for class last year, especially when I was first just getting to know Porsche and we'd still talk after the bell or be mucking around with Alex/Adrian/Taco... then I'd also go off on tangents during class discussions and I was really bad with class novels, i.e. I didn't finish reading them on time or at all (they were all crap except for Shakespeare ("The Merchant of Venice"), "Raw" by Scott Monk, "King of Shadows") by Susan Cooper.