2. Hacker, Diana. A Pocket Style Manual. NY: Bedford / St. Martin's, 2004. (no need to buy it if you have the MLA Guidelines for Research.)



Optional Reference books:

- Harmon, William. A Handbook to Literature. NJ: Prentice Hall, 2000.                               

                                  OR

- M.H. Abrams. A Glossary of Literary Terms. Boston, MA: Thomson, 2005 .

 

Course Description:


This course should serve as a general introduction to literary genres through the study of short stories or essays, poems, and plays with the aim of developing understanding, critical thinking and appreciation for such creative works. This intro is supposed to prepare you for further advanced courses in literature, as well as develop your writing and speech skills through dramatic readings and poetry appreciation. Yet, the utmost goal of this course is to allow you to appreciate literary texts in their various forms and to enjoy them.


Course Objectives:


1. Critically read literary works including fiction, poetry, non-fiction (for example, literary criticism), drama
2. Analyze literary works
3. Evaluate literary works
4. Write critically about literature


Grading Policy & Course Requirements:


1. Attendance & Participation: %10

Roll call taken promptly at beginning of class. Every student is expected to attend on time every lecture. Absence and tardiness cannot be made up. No exceptions. Attendance and participation are inseparable, which means if you have many unexcused absences, the logical consequence would be losing 10% of your total grade. I need each one of you to do the reading assignment on time and to participate in class discussion. You'll be graded for your effort in joining the discussion and will not be criticized for your views.



2. Presentations: 5%

You will be responsible for a total of One PowerPoint presentations. You need to reserve a topic and a date for your presentation from the course syllabus ASAP.


3. Critical Responses: 10%

Your understanding depends on several things. You will need to read the selections two or three times to gather a full understanding. It is like seeing a movie more than once when you missed or didn't get certain parts. We can notice different things, small but important details each time we see it. These details enhance our understanding of the whole text. The same goes to literature. The more time and attention you give to details, the deeper your understanding will be. You will also need to write extensively about what you read. Writing about literature is but one way of understanding literature. This is especially helpful if you need help understanding the piece. Critical response writing will be one of the assignments you will complete for this course. The responses will be especially useful because it will help you develop and catalog ideas that you will be able to use in your exams. A useful source of information and discussion will be dialoguing with one another. You are responsible for a total of 2, 1-2pages, typed critical responses on the material covered during the semester. The third response is optional to those who wish to improve their grade.  In such an assignment you will merely formulate your critical opinion about a certain text in a good thesis which you’ll defend in the body of your essay and in the end restate. The topic for the response would be any of the texts covered before the assigned deadline. You need to follow the MLA guidelines in formatting your document. These guidelines are available in Diana Hacker’s A Pocket Style Manual listed above and can also be accessed on-line via the following link: http://www.dianahacker.com/resdoc/p04_c08_o.html. You will need to register first as a student to be able to access it. No research is necessary for such an assignment. The due dates for journals are marked in your syllabus. Zeroes are registered for assignments submitted late or copied. If the problem with the work is cleared up within the week, the paper will be graded but a letter grade lower will be the consequence of tardiness in completing assigned work.



4. Forum Entries: 5%


An on-line forum is established for this course trough my website and I expect each one of you to post entries on a regular basis. The purpose of this forum is to carry an on-going discussion on the discussed issues out of lecture hours. It is not enough to place an entry, rather I do expect you to respond to comments posted by your classmates as well and have an ongoing chain of thoughts instead of separate, irrelevant entries. These entries will be graded. Save all your course work, including these entries, numbered, and dated, on a Flash/CD, RW. This device will be collected intermittently for grading and evaluation purposes. The forum site will be announced whenever it is ready.


5. Exams: 30% Midterm , 40% Final Exam

A revision session will be held before the Midterm and the final exams. These sessions will allow you to pose any question you have in mind, providing that you have already revised the covered material. Both Midterm and Final exams will be divided into two parts. The first will include comprehension questions and excerpts from the assigned material. The second section will be in the form of essay. You should be able to organize your ideas clearly in a coherently organized essay.