I B D I P L O M A P R O G R A M M E

To help you prepare for the new English A syllabus, we’ve summed up some of the most important changes

that will impact your teaching

Get ready for the English syllabus change

Inside – more detail on:

✓ The course aims for both the English A Literature and English A Language and Literature syllabuses

✓ The new Works in translation component for English A Literature

✓ The individual syllabus requirements for English A Literature

✓ The ‘language’ aspect of the Language and Literature syllabus and how the Course Companion can help if you are new to this area

Publishing April 2011

Giving you plenty of time to prepare

Oxford works uniquely with the IB to ensure that our resources take the right approach, so your students learn the IB way

Course aims – for HL and SL✓ Help students develop an understanding of how language,

context and culture influence the construction of meaning in texts

✓ Encourage students to identify and analyse textual features such as structure, form and style

✓ Have students think critically about the interaction between a text, its purpose and its audience

How Oxford can help – Course Companion English A Language and Literature

English A Literature – what to expectA new, flexible literature course that helps students reflect on literary artistry and encourages them to think critically about their readings. With a focus on the literary and cultural contexts of each text, this course also emphasises intercultural awareness and different cultural perspectives through a unit on Works in translation.

Course aims – for HL and SL✓ Develop in students an understanding of the techniques involved in literary criticism

✓ Cultivate the ability to form independent literary judgements and to support those ideas

How Oxford can help – Course Companion English A Literature

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UNIT 4 ● Conventions and genre

Why are we weighed upon with heaviness,And utterly consumed with sharp distress, While all things else have rest from weariness?We only toil who are the first of things, And make perpetual moan,Still from one sorrow to another thrown;Nor ever fold our wings,And cease from wanderings,Nor steep our brows in slumber’s holy balm;Nor hearken what the inner spirit sings“There is no joy but calm!” –Why should we only toil, the roof and crown of things?

Alfred Lord Tennyson

Both of these extracts are from longer poems, so these give you only a brief sample of the poets’ ideas and feelings, but there are some inferences that can be drawn in the changing focus of some of the poetry of the 18th and 19th centuries.

Read the above extracts written by Pope and Tennyson and see what similarities and differences they have.

a What is your sense of the voice and attitude of the speaker?

b How alike or different is the verse, its rhythm and pace?

c What values seem to be foregrounded and praised in each extract?

Activity

After the strong emphasis on intellectual reasoning in 18th-century poetry, the Romantic movement in the middle to end of the 19th century tended to value both the imagination and the expression of the self, and these appear in many of the lyric poems. Both narrative and dramatic poetry continued to be written, but with much less popularity and prevalence than in earlier periods.

The 19th and 20th centuriesAgain, the dominance of lyric poetry is sustained into these two centuries. Dramatic poetry still can be found, narrative poetry as well, but one strong interest in poetry tended to be its connection with certain movements in the visual arts such as surrealism and symbolism. Stories tended to be more often found in the novel and short story than in poetry. Drama had its own development as well, but the poetic demands of the 16th century had disappeared; the blank verse practised by Shakespeare and his contemporaries had largely disappeared from the theatre.

One of the interesting features of the developments in poetry in the 19th and 20th centuries, especially from the angle of the auditory and the visual, was the experimentation with different formal aspects of poetry such as how the poem would appear on the page, and how sound features would be handled in poetry.

“Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings; it

takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility…”

William Wordsworth

“A Poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to

cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds… Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments

of the best and happiest minds…”

Percy Bysshe Shelley

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Probing activity questions help students reflect more deeply on the text, encouraging independent, original and critical thinking

Different literary genres are studied in detail, in line with Parts 2 and 3 of the new syllabus

37

SECTION 1 ● Section title goes here

Language and cultureLanguage, as a communicative act, is social. While meaning may be tied to cultural context, culture itself is shaped through our language use. These concerns will be the more specific focus of chapter 4, but it is worth noting here the close tie between what it means to be the social, cultural animals that we are and language. The more closely we consider language, the more obvious it is that it has special qualities equivalent to, or as a function of, its place in our lives.

Activity: Life and death in languageRead the following extracts from On the Death and Life of Languages by Claude Hagege and answer the questions that follow.

Languages accompany human groups. They disappear with them; or, on the contrary, if those groups are large and quick and spread beyond their original environment, the languages can be dispersed, in their wake, over vast territories. Thus, it is from those who speak them that they derive their life principles and their ability to increase their area of usage.

Nevertheless, languages are also one of the essential sources of the vital force that animates human communities. More than any other properties defining what is human, languages possess the power to provide individuals with the basis for their integration into society—that is, on a level different from one’s biological framework and mental structure, meaning the very foundations of one’s life.

… the existence of languages is a very simple and universal means for deceiving nothingness. After all, languages allow for history, in the evocation of the dead through public or private discourse … No animal species possesses the means to evoke its past, assuming that some of them do not lack memory, or at least memories. It is humans who create the history of animals, in paleontological works in which their language allows them to relate a breathtakingly old past. ….

Through speaking and writing, languages not only allow us to trace our history well beyond our own physical obliteration, they also contain our history. Any philologist, or anyone curious about languages, knows that treasures are deposited within them that relate societies’ evolution and individuals’ adventures. Idiomatic expressions, compound words, have a past that calls up living figures. The history of words reflects the history of ideas. If societies do not die, it is only because they have historians, or annalists, or official narrators. It is also because they have languages, and are recounted in these languages.

Source: Hagege, Claude. (trans. Gladding, Jody). 2009. On

the Death and Life of Languages. New Haven: Yale University

Press. [pp. TBC]

Questions to the text

1 Do you agree with Hagege’s views on language? What does it mean when he says language “deceives nothingness”?

2 Hagege thinks it is important for people to be bilingual, no matter what two languages they speak. Why would he hold this view?

3 Can bilingualism (or multilingualism) call our attention to special qualities of language?

Act

ivit

y

What is culture?Since language is so clearly tied up in culture, and a significant part of this course asks you to look at both literature and language in relation to culture, it is worth asking what culture actually is. Though we could start with a basic definition for culture, it is worth looking at a variety of definitions and how our ideas of what culture is, how it operates, and how it should be studied have changed over the years and are really in a constant state of flux. It would be wrong to say that the word “culture” means the same thing to every person. In fact, your own conception of culture may vary depending on your culture.

What role do languages have in your life?

Discussion Point

Culture a system of meaning for a group of people and it includes language, laws, customs, myths, images, texts, and daily practices.

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Discussion points are integrated throughout to stimulate debate and raise awareness of different perspectives

Understanding the relationship between language and culture is a priority, in line with the new syllabus

A wide variety of text types demonstrates how language can be used in different contexts

Reading it two waysLook at the following list of phrases and statements collected from newspaper headings, shop signs, advertisements, etc.

Ambiguity can create hilarious situations. Imagine the impact of the same potential ambiguity in legal documents or philosophical treatises. In fact,

poststructuralists would argue that this ambiguity is everywhere, even if not in quite so obvious a manner.

As you read through the list looking for the “jokes,” pay attention to what assumption you make or how your assumptions change in order to be able to “read” these statements.

Act

ivit

y

We now have dress shirts on sale for men with 16 necks!

Entire store 25% off

“I once shot an elephant in my pajamas.”

Hospitals are sued by 7 foot doctors

I will bring my bike tomorrow if it looks nice in the morning.

Tech support: “What does the screen say now?” Person: “It says, ‘hit enter when ready’.” Tech support: “Well?” Person: “How do I know when it’s ready?”

Please wait for hostess to be seated

Students hate annoying teachers.

They hit the man with a cane.

Slow children at play

Automatic washing machines: please remove all your clothes when the light goes out

We exchange anything—bicycles, washing machines, etc. Why not bring your wife along and get a wonderful bargain?

Toilet out of order. Please use floor below.

March planned for next August

Lingerie shipment hijacked—thief gives police the slip

L.A. voters approve urban renewal by landslide

Quarter of a million Chinese live on water

Hershey Bars Protest

Police begin campaign to run down jaywalkers

Safety experts say school bus passengers should be belted

"Iraqi head seeks arms".

Local high school dropouts cut in half

"New vaccine may contain rabies".

19

SECTION 1 ●Section title goes here

to argue that even our own understanding and knowledge of ourselves is in question and ontological certainty itself is more arbitrary than fixed. Postmodernism also tends to refer to both a historical era and an artistic movement that further problematizes its usage. Yet another term that is frequently substituted for poststructuralism is deconstruction with its emphasis on texts and language mis-speaking, a multiplicity of meanings that emerge through interpretation and reversals of traditional binary operations. It is worth noting that both the overlap and the differences in all three of these terms have had an influence in the approach to literary texts during the second half of the 20th century. Again, for our purposes, the primary focus on the lack of an absolute informs the focus on ongoing and complex negotiations between parties such as a text and a reader (in other words, socially constructed meanings).

Ontological certainty A doubt in ontological certainty refers to our inability to ever know for certain who we are or the authenticity of the world in which we live.

Binary operations A system of conceptual oppositions where one concept is understood in light of its opposite (i.e. we know “love” because we know “hate”).

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Activities are designed to cultivate and strengthen skills linked to the syllabus and the IB learner profile

English A Language and Literature – what to expectA brand new course that looks at English beyond the bounds of traditional literary study. This course aims to have students critically engage with a wide variety of texts, to ultimately understand how language constructs meaning.

A huge array of texts are included, exposing students to a broad range of literature and literary devices

IB Course Companion English A Literature

18

11 ● Poetry

connection to actual poems, and seeing them in various contexts, they are difficult to remember in a meaningful way. You can read Chapter XX for further exploration and practice.

Returning to the aspect of sound in poetry, here is a small project that involves reading, listening and creating.

1 Choose a poem that you like from any source. Select a poem that is not much longer than a sonnet, around 14 to 16 lines. You might find it easier to work with a metrical poem.

2 Spend some time reading and re-reading the poem, maybe finding out something about the writer, even creating some visual or graphic representation, becoming truly familiar with the poem.

3 Using original music, or favourite musical works of whatever kind you believe suits the mood, rhythm and words of the poem, create a performance piece that you could present yourself or with the help of others.

4 Write a short critical introduction or afterword in which you discuss the poem itself, some of your creative choices and their rationales. (In some cases you may want to provide a little help with how you heard the meaning of the poem.)

5 Embody the poem in a performance.

Act

ivity

Theory of Knowledge connectionsAs a way of bringing together the emphasis of this chapter on the importance of seeing poetry as a meaningful and pleasurable facet of artistic expression, we will explore the connections of poetry to your Theory of Knowledge course by posing the question:

What kinds of truth can poetry convey and how is a truth delivered and experienced through this form of art?

What you need to do:

1 Read through the following four short poems by yourself.

2 Organize yourselves into groups of four:

a Re-read the poems silently.

b Ask each member of the group to read aloud one of the poems.

c Ask each member of the group to say a sentence that essentializes a ‘truth’ that has been heard in one of the poems.

d Draw up a list of the poems and the ‘truths’ perceived by group members.

e Each member then reads each poem aloud again.

f In turn, each member chooses and talks about a ‘truth’ someone else has experienced from a particular poem, trying to understand how that ‘truth’ was derived from the poem.

3 The exercise should finish with a discussion of these questions:

● Was there a sense that everyone ‘heard’ the truths of these poems similarly?

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TOK is integrated into every chapter in both books, making it easier for you to bring TOK into your lessons

Experienced authors you can trustHannah Tyson and Mark Beverley – teachers, examiners, and workshop leaders who have worked closely on the revisions to English A Rob Allison and Brian Chanen – teachers and examiners who have collaborated in creating the new English syllabuses

How to tackle the new English A Literature syllabus with Oxford

Syllabus Requirement

What this is – in brief for HL & SL

How the Course Companion can help

Works in translation

A literary study of works in translation

Dedicated unit on literary translation

Detailed study A close study and analysis of works of different genres

Nine chapters on genre to ensure well-rounded understanding

Literary genres A literary study of works of the same genre

Focused, in-depth material on genres, for detailed understanding

Options Three works chosen by the school, with 4 options on approaches to study

An integrated array of potential options for further study

New to teaching language?

The text informs students on

approaches to critical language,

covering areas such as mass

communications and language

in cultural contexts – in line with

the new syllabus.

English A Literature – Contents Unit 1 – Introduction to the course1. Nine propositions about reading

2. Engaging writing

Unit 2 – Internal assessment3. Close reading as a practice

4. Tackling Paper 1

5. The individual oral commentary

6. The individual oral presentation

Unit 3 – A wider world7. Literature in translation

Unit 4 – Conventions and genre8. Writing

9. Conventions and genre

10. Drama

11. Poetry

12. The novel and short story

13. The autobiography

14. The travel narrative

15. The essay

16. How to write an essay for the Paper 2 exam

Unit 5 – the written assignment17. The extended essay

Glossary

What exactly is covered?Our new English Course Companions are closely matched to the new syllabuses – see how they cover the syllabus requirements below:

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English A Language and Literature – Contents Unit 1 – How and why1. How has the study of literature changed?

2. Thinking about language

3. Putting it all together

Unit 2 – Language4. Language in Cultural Context

5. Assessment in Language in Cultural Context

6. Language and Mass Communication

7. Assessment in Language and Mass Communication

Unit 3 – Literature 8. Literature: Critical reading

9. Assessment in Literature: Texts and Contexts

10. Literature: Texts and Contexts

11. Assessment in Literature: Critical Study

✓ Contents link closely to internal and external assessments, for maximum preparation

✓ Nine chapters on genre, ensuring that students’ knowledge is in-depth and well-rounded

✓ A skills-based approach ensures students develop and practice the skills they need for success

✓ An entire unit on translated works, to build intercultural awareness and understanding of different cultural perspectives