CONGRATULATIONS TO BASTIAN'S WAY SPM, STPM, IGCSE & A Level STUDENTS
STPM 2009 - Literature in English
Result: A
- Joanne Lim - SMK Taman SEA, PJ
- Andrea Lau - SMK Sultan Abdul Samad, PJ
SPM 2009 - Literature in English
A+ Jayshendra - SMK Damansara Jaya, PJ
A Tham Wai Liang - SMK Damansara Jaya, PJ
B+ Jordan Too - SMK Damansara Jaya, PJ
SPM 2008 - Literature in English
Result: A1
Hong Di-Anne - SMK Damansara Jaya, PJ
Lam Rui Rong - SMK Sri Aman, PJ
Rachel Chiah - Sri Cempaka, KL
Rohshini Devi d/o Vijaya - SMK Bukit Bandaraya, KL
Yee Jun Yit - SMK Bandar Utama Damansara 4, PJ
A2
Neal Tan - SMK Damansara Jaya, PJ
Kathleen Lalitha Ramanathan - SMK Damansara Jaya, PJ
Rabin Patmanathan - SMK Damansara Jaya, PJ
IGCSE (CIE) May/June 2009
A* Claire Hooi
A Lee Cheng Wei
Cambridge International Examinations
A-Level [June 2008 Examinations]
Tan Jia Li: A
Joel Soh: A
SPM 2012: Titles for study
Poems
Theme: Relationships
1.Tonight I Can Write - Pablo Neruda
2. Ways of Love - Chung Yee Chong
3. A Prayer for My Daughter - Yeats
4. The Way Things Are - Roger McGough
5. For My Old Amah - Wong Phui Nam
6. How Do I Love Thee? - Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Theme: Perception of Life
1. Birches- Robert Frost
2. I Am - John Clare
3. This Is A Photograph of Me - Margaret Atwood
4. Waiting to Go On - Hugo Williams
5. Daring Tears - Craig Romkema
6.The Traveller - Muhammad Hj Salleh
Theme: Conflicts
1. Dulce et Decorum Est- Wilfred Owen
2. The Man He Killed - Thomas Hardy
3. Death of A Rainforest - Cecil Rajendra
4. The War Against Trees - Stanley Kunitz
5. A Quarrel Between Night and Day - Omar Mohd Noor
6. "Crabbed age and youth cannot live together "- Shakespeare
Short Stories
1. Naukar - Anya Sitaram
2. Cinderella Girl - Vivien Alcock
3. The Landlady - Roald Dahl
4. Neighbours - Robert Raymer
5. Harrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut Jr
Novels
1. Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury
2. Fasting, Feasting - Anita Desai
3. Holes - Louis Sachar
Drama
1. Julius Caesar - Shakespeare
2. The Lion and the Jewel - Wole Soyinka
3. An Inspector Calls - JB Priestley
POETRY: A GUIDE
A poem is sectioned into stanzas, just as narratives (novels, stories, articles) are sectioned into paragraphs. Usually, each stanza will contain a unit of meaning. The organisation of lines within each stanza is called the form and there are a variety of identifiable forms, depending on the pattern of rhymes used.
Rhyme is the identity of sound between words, usually at the end of verse lines. The rhyme scheme is the pattern in which the rhymed line-endings are arranged within the stanza. Critics usually express this by giving each line-ending with the same rhyme a letter of the alphabet. Rhyme schemes may follow a fixed pattern, as is found in sonnets, or can be arranged freely to suit the poet’s requirements.
- Rhyming couplet - pair of rhymed lines: aa bb cc.
- Tercet - three-line stanza: aaa.
- Quatrain - abab or abcb or abba.
- Iambic Pentameter - ten-syllable line with one unstressed syllable followed by one stressed, either: abab or aabb.
- Rhyme royal - seven-line stanza: ab ab bcc.
- Octavia rima - eight-line stanza, comic effect: ab ab ab cc.
- Sonnet - one-stanza lyric, consisting of fourteen iambic pentameter lines with intricate rhyme scheme.
- Petrarchan sonnet - eight lines: ab ba ab ba plus six lines cde cde.
- Shakespearean sonnet - three quatrains plus one couplet: abab cdcd efef gg.
- Spenserian sonnet - rhyme links each quatrain to the next: abab bcbc cdcd ee.
- Lyric - short, song-like verse, conveying emotion.
- Ballad - quatrain narrative, often containing a refrain.
- Mock Heroic - trivialises the subject matter.
- Lament - short poem conveying intense grief.
[It will be beneficial for students to know the terms that have been highlighted in blue.]
Rhythm refers to the movement of the poem, which is achieved by the organisation of stressed and light syllables, creating a ‘beat’ within the verse. Identifying the type of rhythm is easier if you read the poetry out loud so that you can hear clearly where the stresses naturally occur.
SOUNDS IN POETRY
A poet will often deliberately choose a word so that its sound echoes or reflects its meaning. The technical terms to describe these sounds are:
- alliteration – repetition of similar sounds, usually in the initial consonants of a word.
- assonance – repetition of similar vowel sounds in neighbouring words.
- consonance – repetition of the same consonant, but different vowel sounds in neighbouring words.
- onomatopoeia – sound echoes the sense in that the word reflects the sound that it refers to.
Imagery is an essential technique used by poets. It creates mental pictures for the reader: CS Lewis described imagery as ‘a picture made out of words’. Poets have to use words economically and therefore will convey meaning in a condensed way. An efficient and effective device to convey meaning is through comparison. Metaphors and similes are both employed to make the reader think about comparing one thing to another. A simile is a direct comparison, whereas a metaphor is an indirect comparison – e.g. ‘Jack was as angry as a lion’ (simile) ‘Jack was a lion’ (metaphor). Look carefully at the image that is used and what kind of associations you have with that image. They will often tell you something more about the content of the poem.
Everything in the poem contributes towards the tone of the poem. The tone is the attitude, emotions, mood and atmosphere conveyed within the poem. The tone of the poem can be:
- conventional
- satirical
- formal
- sentimental
- bold
- reserved
- grave
- whimsical.
The above information was extracted from: Keeling, Z. and Rowe, C. AS in a Week : English Literature. London: Letts Educational Ltd, 2000.
- Francesco Petrarca (July 20, 1304 – July 19, 1374). One of the greatest writers of lyrical poetry. His sonnets became the model for love poetry in Europe, influencing writers for many centuries. At age 23, he met and fell desperately in love with a young woman whom he called Laura. She was already married but he wrote a remarkable series of love poems inspired by her and continued to do so even after her death in 1348.
- William Shakespeare (April 23, 1564 – April 23, 1616). Considered the greatest playwright and poet in the English Language. Some of his plays, such as Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet, are among the most famous literary works in the world.
- Edmund Spenser (1552 – Jan. 16,1599). A leading English poet in the time of Queen Elizabeth 1. Born in London where his father was a clothmaker. After finishing his studies, Spenser became an assistant to the Earl of Leicester, a very powerful man and it was then that he got to know the poet, Sir Philip Sidney. They became lifelong friends.
LITERARY TERMS - It is important to know some literary terms and their purpose in the material/text that is being studied. Ability to demonstrate this knowledge in the writing of essays will be of great advantage. The terms below have been taken from Paul Pascoe's notes on A Choice of Poets by York Notes, published by York Press for Longman (2003).
alliteration the occurence in a phrase or line of two or more words having the same initial consonants, e.g. fast flowing; sweet, swift.
atmosphere a mood dominating a piece of writing.
connotation/word association various secondary meanings and overtones - what the word suggests beyond what it directly refers to. Readers of poetry must be alert to connotation.
image/imagery image usually applies to a picture which words call to mind, such as light and darkness. Imagery usually applies to the poet's use of particular devices, essentially simile and metaphor.
irony/ironic words used to convey the opposite of their literal meaning - a deliberate contrast between apparent and intended meaning.
metaphor involves unstated comparison and may pick up unusual points of similarity.
parody a literary work that mimics another work or style and deliberately holds it up to ridicule.
rhyme deliberate correspondences of sounds, usually, but not always at the ends of lines; masculine rhyme is a rhyme of only one syllable; it is terminal and stressed, e.g. annoy, convoy, feminine rhyme is a rhyme of two syllables. The second syllable is not stressed, e.g. swallow/follow, or three or more syllables in which only the first is stressed, e.g. edible/incredible.
Isn't amazing that despite having been written centuries ago, the works of William Shakespeare are still able being studied all over the world? Current SPM Literature in English students have the privilege of studying a well-known Roman play that is, Julius Caesar.Any SPM student who wishes to participate in a discussion on the play will have to send a request by email to be added to the group.
Studying English LiteratureWhen we dip into the rich variety of novels, poems, and plays which constitute English Literature we are reading works which have lasted for generations, or centuries, and they have lasted because they are good. These works say something worth saying, and say it with artistry strong enough to survive while lesser works drop into obscurity.Literature is part of our cultural heritage which is freely available to everyone, and which can enrich our lives in all kinds of ways. Once we have broken the barrier that makes studying literature seem daunting, we find the works can be entertaining, beautiful, funny, tragic. They convey profundity of thought, richness of emotion, insight into character. They take us beyond our limited experience of life to show us the lives of other people at other times. They stir us intellectually and emotionally, and deepen our understanding of our history, our society, and our own individual lives. In great writing from the past we find the England of our ancestors, and we not only see the country and the people as they were, but we also soak up the climate of the times through the language itself, its vocabulary, grammar, and tone. We would only have to consider the writing of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Boswell, Dickens, and Samuel Beckett side by side to see how the way writers use language embodies the cultural climate of their time.Literature can also give us glimpses of much earlier ages. Glimpses of Celtic Ireland in the poetry of Yeats, or of the Romans in Shakespeare's plays, for example, can take us in our imaginations back to the roots of our culture, and the sense of continuity and change we get from surveying our history enhances our understanding of our modern world. Literature can enrich our experience in other ways too. London, for example, is all the more interesting a city when behind what we see today we see the London known to Dickens, Boswell and Johnson, or Shakespeare. And our feeling for nature can be deepened when a landscape calls to mind images from, say, Wordsworth, Thomas Hardy, or Ted Hughes.But good works of literature are not museum pieces, preserved and studied only for historical interest. They last because they remain fresh, transcending as well as embodying the era in which they were written. Each reader reading each work is a new and unique event and the works speak to us now, telling us truths about human life which are relevant to all times. We don't have to read far before we find that a writer has portrayed a character who is in some way like us, confronting life-experiences in some way like our own, and when we find ourselves caught up with the struggles of a character perhaps we are rehearsing the struggles to come in our own lives. And when we are moved by a poem it can enrich us by putting words to feelings which had lain dormant for lack of a way of expressing them, or been long-forgotten in the daily round of the workplace, the supermarket, the traffic jam, and the TV News.We can gain a lot from literature in many ways, but the most rewarding experiences can come in those moments when we feel the author has communicated something personally to us, one individual to another. Such moments can help validate our personal experience at a depth which is rarely reached by everyday life or the mass media.So why do we need to study English Literature, instead of just reading it? Well, we don't need to study it, but when visiting a country for the first time it can help to have books by people who have been there before by our side. When we start to read literature, particularly older works, we have to accept that we are not going to get the instant gratification that we have become used to from popular entertainment. We have to make an effort to accommodate to the writer's use of language, and to appreciate the ideas he is offering. Critics can help us make that transition, and can help fill out our understanding by telling us something about the social climate in which a work was written, or about the personal circumstances of the author while he was writing it. We are not going to enjoy every literary work, and there may be times when we find reading a critic is more interesting than reading the actual work. Reading the work of a good critic can be edifying in itself. Making the effort to shape our own thoughts into an essay is also an edifying experience, and just as good literature lasts, so do the personal benefits that we gain from studying it. Whether we choose to study it or read it for pleasure, when we look back over our literature we are looking back over incredible richness. Not just museum pieces, but living works which we can buy in bookshops, borrow from the library, or download from the internet and read today, right now.
© Ian Mackean
(from
http://www.english-literature.org/essays/studying.html )
What is literary writing? John Oldcastle considers the qualities which distinguish literary writing from other kinds of writing, exploring the techniques used by literary writers, and their motives for writing, and offering many fine examples of literary writing to illustrate his thesis.
http://www.english-literature.org/essays/literary.html
