Havergal's Uncalendar, 2016-2017 Academic Year

GRADE 12 ENG4U – English, Grade 12, University Preparation

1 CREDIT The ENG4U course is a course about thinking – not WHAT to think but HOW to think. Have you ever had this experience: your teacher assigns a story for the class to read. You read it and have no idea what it means beyond the literal, but your classmates seem to have no end of interpretations, observations, and questions. How do they do it? Well, never fear! After you learn about the conventions of literature in this course, you will have a framework with which to analyze any narrative. But your learning doesn’t end just there. You learn what chiasmus is by saying what you mean, and meaning what you say. You will read a selection of modern poetry, and you never know when a line of poetry you read in school will come unbidden into your thoughts during key moments along your journey. In ENG4U you will deepen your understanding of the five core principles of media literacy; observe the conventions of tragedy in action as you see characters in plays subjected to forces that prevent them from attaining their joy; and encounter the imagined life of a protagonist in nineteenth century England and compare her life to that of a character in a modern novel to see if they are really as different as they first appear. You will find out what a social myth is and why playwright George Bernard Shaw remarked that, “a temptation to tell the truth should be just as carefully considered as a temptation to tell a lie.” The mission of this course is to the answer the question posed by Canadian literary critic and teacher, Northrop Frye, “What is the good of studying literature?” ENG4U is a journey through essays, ads, speeches, literary criticism, plays, novels, and poems to discover the answer. Warning: taking this course may cause you to educate your imagination. Prerequisite: ENG3U – English, Grade 11, University Preparation Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body. —Joseph Addison The Booker-Prize winning author Julian Barnes says, “When you read a great book, you don’t escape for life, you plunge deeper into it.” Are you looking for a course to help you plunge deeper into life whilst also improving your reading, writing, and critical thinking skills that are so important for university? Look no further! Great writers and thinkers have always been even greater readers. Writer D. H. Lawrence referred to the novel as “the bright book of life.” Literature puts ideas upside down for argumentation, shows us ways of being, helps us to navigate the big emotional moments inherent in living a human life, reveals universal truths, and allows us to step into other people’s shoes and see the world from another person’s perspective. Current research from the University of Toronto demonstrates that exposure to literature not only helps us to deal with uncertainty, ambiguity, and the unknown in our daily lives, but it also opens our minds and improves our creativity. This course is for both people who like discussing literature as well as those who prefer to reflect on it and write about it quietly. It is also suitable for those who love to read as well as those who want to improve their reading skills and knowledge of Western literature. Did you know that some police forces, law departments, and medical schools give their students required literary reading lists in order to learn empathy for their clients? If you are looking for a liberal ETS4U – Studies In Literature, Grade 12, University Preparation 1 CREDIT

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