English Literature Course Structure

KNOWLEDGE OF: 35%-40%

• Literary background
• Identification of authors (examples may include Shakespeare, Dickens, Chaucer, Austen, Blake, and Milton)
• Metrical patterns (refer to the way a poet creates rhythm; iambic, anapestic, trochaic, spondaic, and dactylic patterns)
• Literary references (an author takes an idea, phrase, passage, character, or other aspects of another author’s work and inserts it into his own; this reference is recognized as an influence, device, or homage)
• Literary terms/devices (allusion, diction, epigraph, euphemism, foreshadowing, imagery, metaphor, personification)

ABILITY TO: 60%-65%

• Analyze the elements of form in a literary passage (first impressions, vocabulary, and diction, discerning patterns, point of view and characterization, symbolism)
• Perceive meanings (by examining the perception of the work one can establish a central pattern or design that orders the narrative and organization of any work)
• Identify tone and mood (expressions of irony, sentiment, humor)
• Follow patterns of imagery (draws on the five senses: taste, touch, sight, smell, and sound; descriptive language that functions as a way for the reader to better imagine the world of the piece of literature)
• Identify characteristics of style (examples are parallel constructions, antithesis, polarities, alliteration, internal rhymes)
• Comprehend the reasoning in an excerpt of literary criticism (the art of judging and commenting on the qualities and character of literary works)