Studying English Literature at Tolworth Girls School

Transcription

1 Studying English Literature at Tolworth Girls School

2 Student Expectations To attend all lessons, on time. If you miss a lesson due to illness etc. you will need to , or see, your teacher for missed work. Complete one extended piece of writing a week, per teacher (in class and/or at home). If your attendance declines with no valid reason, we will be contacting home. We expect you to bring the following equipment: o The relevant text(s) you are studying o A pen, highlighters and any other stationery you need o Post-it notes o Sticky tabs o English folder it must be brought to every lesson, with dividers and paper o Anything else you are requested to bring Check Show My Homework after every lesson and use the information given to you. If work is not sufficient or is handed in late, there will be a compulsory catch up session to complete work. Be an avid reader and engage independently with texts outside of those you study in class. Don t be afraid to ask questions and seek help. Have fun!

3 The year ahead Term Teacher 1 Teacher 2 Autumn 1 Othello Death of a Salesman Autumn 2 Othello Death of a Salesman Spring 1 Great Gatsby Keats Spring 2 Great Gatsby Keats Summer 1 Revision / exams Revision / exams Summer 2 Back for year 13 :critical anthology study Back for year 13 curriculum: crime genre study You will be required to purchase a copy of the following texts: 1. Othello by William Shakespeare ISBN: Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller ISBN The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald ISBN This can be found on both Amazon and Waterstones There are also study guides, which can be bought to guide you through the text. Recommended ones are: Study and Revise guide for Othello ISBN: York Notes for Othello ISBN: Study and Revise guide for The Great Gatsby ISBN: York Notes for The Great Gatsby ISBN: York Notes for Death of a Salesman ISBN: You will be receiving an anthology in order to help you with the poetry, we recommend the following study guide: Selected Poems of John Keats: York Notes Advanced Paperback 29 Aug 2003 ISBN: Bring your texts to your first lesson with each teacher and they will let you know how to use them and when to bring them. You will also need to bring a folder, dividers, and lined paper to your first lesson.

4 How to be best prepared: Summer homework 1. Read Othello and complete research tasks and questions. 2. Read and analyse the Keats poem in this booklet 3. Read through the Linguistic terms given to you in this booklet and complete the activities 4. Read, write, read some more enjoy it! 5. Visit websites like AQA to read more about the specification (AQA LIT SPEC B) 6. Watch the film The Great Gatsby either the 2013 film or the 1974 film look out for how it reflects and deviates from the original novel! Useful websites: AQA link to specification: Guardian article on The Great Gatsby: Information about Keats: EMC: Production of Othello by The National Youth Theatre:

5 Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art by Keats Bright star! would I were steadfast as thou art Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night, And watching, with eternal lids apart, Like Nature s patient sleepless Eremite, The moving waters at their priestlike task Of pure ablution round earth s human shores, Or gazing on the new soft fallen mask Of snow upon the mountains and the moors No yet still steadfast, still unchangeable, Pillow d upon my fair love s ripening breast, To feel for ever its soft fall and swell, Awake for ever in a sweet unrest, Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath, And so live ever or else swoon to death.

6 Othello Research Please complete the following research and extension tasks: Who was Shakespeare? What was society like in Jacobean England? How were people entertained in Jacobean England? What is Racism and how is it applicable to a Jacobean society? Was there gender equality in a Jacobean society? To what degree is this significant?

7 Othello Questions to Consider What do you think are they key themes and concerns within this play? What comments do you think Shakespeare may be making about his own society, via this one? How might audiences today relate to the events, ideas and characters within this play? How might a Jacobean audience respond to the events, ideas and characters within this play?

8 Getting to know Linguistic Terms Allegory: the saying of one thing and meaning another. Sometimes this trope works by an extended metaphor ('the ship of state foundered on the rocks of inflation, only to be salvaged by the tugs of monetarist policy'). More usually it is used of a story or fable that has a clear secondary meaning beneath its literal sense. Orwell's Animal Farm, for example, is assumed to have an allegorical sense Anaphora: Repetition of the same word or words at the beginning of consecutive syntactic units Eponymous: Giving your name to something Elision: The omission of one or more letters or syllables from a word. This is usually marked by an apostrophe: as in 'he's going to the shops'. In early printed texts the elided syllable is sometimes printed as well as the mark of elision, as in Donne's 'She 'is all States, all Princes I'. Figurative language: language used in a non-literal way to describe something in another s terms (e.g. simile or metaphor). Lexical set: words that are habitually used within a given environment constitute a lexical set. Thus 'Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday...' form a lexical set. Metonymy: A figure of speech in which the name of one object is replaced by another which is closely associated with it. So 'the turf' is a metonym for horseracing, 'Westminster' is a metonym for the Houses of Parliament, 'Downing Street' is a metonym for the Prime-Minister or his office. 'Sceptre and crown came tumbling down' is a metonymic way of saying 'the king fell from power'. See synecdoche. Plosive: A consonantal sound in the formation of which the passage of air is completely blocked, such as 'p', 'b', 't'. Synecdoche: the rhetorical figure whereby a part is substituted for a whole ('a suit entered the room'), or, less usually, in which a whole is substituted for a part (as when a policeman is called 'the law' or a manager is called 'the management'). See metonymy. Trochee: a foot of two syllables, in which the accent falls on the first syllable (dúm di). Some words which are trochaic include 'broken', 'taken', 'Shakespeare'. Semantic fields: groups of words connected by a common meaning. Synonyms: words that have equivalent meanings. Antonyms: words that have contrasting meanings. Hypernyms: words whose meanings contain other words, (e.g. animal contains dog, cat and fish). Hyponyms: words that can be included in a larger, more general category (e.g. the hyponyms car, bus, aeroplane as a form of the hypernym transport). Levels of formality: vocabulary styles including slang, colloquial, taboo and formal.

9 Some New Key Terms: Audience: the receivers or intended receivers of a text (written, spoken, multimodal). The concept of an ideal audience/reader is often found in critical discourse. Texts might also have multiple audiences. Discourses: used in many different (and sometime contradictory) ways in language study. Can be used to refer to a mode of language (e.g. spoken or written discourse), a register (e.g. medical or legal discourse), a way of thinking about and presenting something (e.g. representing language using a discourse of decay). Foregrounding: the way in which texts emphasise key events or ideas through the use of attention-seeking devices (in terms of lexis, semantics, phonology or grammar) that either repeat content (parallelism) or break established patterns (deviation). Deviation may be: - external: breaking from the normal conventions of language use, for example in the use of nonsense words or ungrammatical constructions - internal: breaking from a pattern that has previously been set up in the text for a striking effect. Genre: the way of categorising and classifying different types of texts according to their features or expected shared conventions. Genres come into being as the result of people agreeing about perceived similar characteristics in terms of content or style. Genres are fluid and dynamic and new genres continually evolve as a result of new technologies and cultural practices. Mode: the way in which language is communicated between text producer and text receiver and the physical channel through which this is carried out. At its simplest, this could be spoken or written (visual or auditory channel). Mode also encompasses ideas around planning and spontaneity, distance between text producer and receiver, how transitory or long-lasting a text is. Mode is more than a binary opposition, is sometimes visualised as a continuum and is constantly changing as new communication technologies blur the lines between older forms. Narrative: a type of text or discourse that functions to tell a series of events. A narrative is the organisation of experience told by a narrator to any number of narratees. A narrative has two distinctive parts: - the story: the events, places, characters and time of action that act as the building blocks of the narrative - the narrative discourse: the particular shaping of those building blocks into something worth telling through specific choices in language and structure. Specific Tragedy Terms: Hubris: excessive pride or arrogance Hamartia: The tragic hero s fatal flaw Peripeteia: A sudden reversal of fortune Anagnorisis: A critical discovery or realisation Catharsis: Release of built up emotions If you have any further questions, please don t hesitate to the English Department at: Hannah.trevelyan@tolworthgirlsschool.co.uk

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