British and World Literature Online

Hamlet, Hard Times and Siddartha are included in the course

Course Outline

I. LITERATURE

Readings include:

Novels

Students will read two of the following:

• The Canterbury Tales-Required for Part 1
• Hamlet-Required for Part 1
• Hard Times - Required for Part 2
• 1984 -Required for Part 2

Drama

• Hamlet by William Shakespeare

Prose Fiction and Nonfiction

Works by Homer, Geoffrey Chaucer, James Joyce, Doris Lessing, Kamala Markandaya, Chinua Achebe, George Orwell, and others

 

Poetry

Works by Francesco Petrarcha, William Shakespeare, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Pablo Neruda, William Wordworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Keats, William Butler Yeats, T.S. Elliot, Dylan Thomas, and others

II. COMPOSITION

Throughout the course, students have the opportunity to write about what they have read in formal analytical compositions, creative projects, and online discussions. They complete compositions in a variety of genres including a formal research paper in which they formulate and defend a thesis and incorporate multiple sources to support their assertions. The course provides a structured approach to the writing process and includes student support for planning, drafting, and finalizing written compositions. The course also includes opportunities for public speaking and multimedia presentations.

III. CRITICAL SKILLS PRACTICE

The course provides students with the opportunity to practice critical reading and writing skills in a learning environment that is similar to standardized tests.

Partial List of Skills Taught

• Develop complex compositions using writing processes.
• Select a focus, structure, and point of view relevant to the purpose, genre expectations, audience, length, and format requirements.
• Establish a clear, distinctive, and coherent thesis or perspective and maintains a consistent tone and focus throughout.
• Organize ideas in writing to ensure coherence, logical progression, and support.
• Incorporate elements in writing to enhance meaning and for specific rhetorical and aesthetic purposes.
• Use various forms of persuasion (factual or emotional) to support an opinion in speaking and writing.
• Develop presentations by using clear research questions and creative and critical research strategies.
• Use systematic strategies to organize and record information.
• Integrate databases, graphics, and spreadsheets into word-processed documents.
• Write persuasive pieces (e.g. speech, editorial, letter to the editor, public service announcement).
• Write fictional, autobiographical, or biographical narratives.
• Write historical investigation reports.
• Write job applications and résumés.
• Plan, organize, develop, produce and evaluate an effective multimedia presentation, using tools such as charts, photographs, maps, tables, posters, transparencies, slides and electronic media.
• Deliver oral presentations.
• Produce informal writings for various purposes.
• Analyze the ways in which meaning is affected by structure and word choice in expository texts.
• Evaluate the evidence used to support the author's perspective in expository texts.
• Analyze how words, images, graphics, and sounds work together in various forms to impact meaning.
• Interpret and evaluate the various ways in which events are presented and information is communicated by visual image makers.
• Analyze British and world literature from a variety of authors for style, audience appeal, cultural significance, and plot structure.
• Analyze distinctive elements of a variety of literary forms and types.
• Interpret a variety of texts by identifying and examining literary elements.
• Analyze the use of figurative language in literary works.
• Identify and analyze types of dramatic literature.
• Identify and analyze the conventions and techniques used in different types of dramatic literature.
• Identify and explain the use of poetic elements to enhance meaning and effect.
• Trace etymologies of terms.
• Use roots and affixes to infer word meaning.
• Define and use new words by studying their relationship to other words.
• Use references materials as needed to learn about words.
• Apply techniques to extend vocabulary.