Sunday, June 28, 2009

About Test II

Good Day,

Just a brief note to let you know about the general structure of Test II.

The test will be divided in 4 parts. In part 1, you will have either a matching exercise or a multiple choice exercise so you can show your knowledge about literary terms. I hope you have followed my advice and studied the terms that we provided last term. Remember that acquaintance of those terms is necessary for our sessions on prose and poetry, therefore this is not something new or unexpected to you.
In part 2, just like in our previous test, a number of questions (no more than 3, I expect) will be stated so you provide an analytical, well supported answer, based on what we have discussed in our meetings.
In part 3 you will read some extracts from the texts that have been either discussed in class or that are part of the syllabus in unit 4. The purpose is that you provide information regarding those extracts such as author's name, title of the text, and some elements of those texts which we definitely discussed during our classes.
Finally in part 4, what you like the most: a literary work (which can be either a poem or a short story) will be provided so you can provide a succinct though well supported analysis of that text.
Hope you find this information useful. See you tomorrow.

Sunday, June 7, 2009

Wed. June 10th - Prose Session with D Durán

Dear Students,
It is a pleasure to post these few lines in order to share with you the responsibility of developing next Wednesday's class session. Prof. González has informed me that you have been doing presentations on short stories, so my class will aim at supporting everything you may have been doing these previous weeks. Yet, we have to mention that your work may have been more detailed and comprehensive since you were all dealing with longer stories than the ones I will present to you. Before you proceed in preparing for the class, bring back to your memory the classical story of the Little Red Riding Hood and answer a few questions:

Which genre does this story belong to?
What specific literary form does it exemplify?
Is there a narrator? How is it featured?
From what point of view is the story told?
Who are the main characters?
What is the setting of the story?
What was it about?
What as the tone?
How did the plot go?
How would you decribe the language in the story? How was language used?
Which literary resources are clearly present in the text?
What was the climax?
How was it achieved?
What was the denouement of the story?
Which approach would you consider the most appropriate for its analysis? Why?
Is there any apparent central message in it? If so, which?
Which audience is the story intended for?

In order for us to save some precious time, which we will devote to analysis, you should download, print and carefully read the texts whose hiperlinks you will find just below. (Just CLICK on each link to open files).

Little Red Riding Hood - Versions 1 & 2
Little Red Riding Hood - Version 3
Short Stories 55

I do hope the class will be as enjoyable as its preparation and the readings involved. Thanks for your atention and help. Looking forward to seeing you all there on Wednesday,

D Durán