Introduction

This course is perfect for those who are looking to bolster their literary writing abilities including poetry, drama, and fictional world-building. It will also help you develop your reading and comprehension skills and how you can utilize them to help create more colorful and compelling writing.

About our English Literature and Composition Course

In this course you will learn how to evaluate and properly understand works of fiction, drama, and poetry, immersing yourself in various periods and cultures in the process. You will read literary works and then write essays to support and explain your personal analysis of them. Not only will you gain a deeper appreciation of literature, but develop your own writing skills in the process.

The skills you will gain

• The ability to read a text closely and effectively draw your own conclusions from the details

• Identify and understand the various techniques used to be an author and the effects on the reader
• Develop an accurate interpretation of a text
• Present your interpretation of a text and make a persuasive argument for it in writing

Course equivalency

• This is an introductory college-level equivalent literature course

About the English Literature and Composition Units

The course content that we will outline below is organized in the way in which this course is typically taught. That said, depending on your teacher, may deliver it differently depending on local priorities and preferences. In any case, you will find everything included in this course listed below.

Day 1: Short Fiction I

This unit focuses on your critical reading skills in order to help you read, interpret, and analyze prose with a critical perspective.

The various skills that you will practice include:

• Interpret the role of a given character within a fictional piece
• Identify and interpret the setting of a story
• Understand how a story is structured and the way in which it is interpreted
• Understand and interpret a narrator and their perspective
• Read text both literally and figuratively
• Learn the basics of literary analysis and how it can help you develop as a writer

Day 2: Poetry I

This unit focuses on your ability to read and explore poetry with a critical eye and how to analyze similar elements within a wide variety of poetry.

The various skills that you will practice include:

• Identify characters within poetry
• Understand how to interpret the meaning behind the poetic structure
• Analyze word choice and how to find meaning within
• Identify techniques such as contrast, metaphor, simile, and alliteration and how they can transform a piece of poetry

Day 3: Longer Fiction & Drama I

In this unit, you will begin to observe how the literary techniques that you have explored in the prior units and how unfold over the course of longer works. Following that, you will analyze how certain characters develop and how they interact with others throughout the course of the narrative.

The various skills that you will practice include:

• Effectively interpret character descriptions and perspectives
• Understand character evolution throughout a narrative and how that helps to develop the plot
• Utilise conflict and plot development
• Interpret symbolism within a text
• Identify any evidence supporting literary arguments

Day 4: Short Fiction II

Begin to develop a deeper understanding of the various roles of character and conflict within fiction and explore how a narrator’s perspective can effectively color storytelling.

The various skills that you will practice include:

• Explore protagonists, antagonists, character relationships, and conflict in fiction
• Identify character interactions with the setting and their significance to the story and its development
• Identifying archetypes in literature
• Explore various types of narration like a stream of consciousness
• Identify and understand narrative distance, tone, and perspectives

Day 5: Poetry II

In unit 5 you will study the various forms of poetry and examine how structure and figurative language can create impactful meaning.

The various skills that you will practice include:

• Identify and understand traits of open and closed structures in poetry
• Explore the use of techniques used in poetry such as imagery and hyperbole
• Understand that types of comparisons in poetry such as allusion and personification
• Be able to identify and interpret extended metaphors

Day 6: Longer Fiction & Drama II

In this unit, you will begin to analyze how the various literary techniques play out and shift throughout the course of longer works. You will also begin charting how characters change (or remain the same) as they are affected by various developments in the plot.

The various skills that you will practice include:

• Interpret foil characters
• Understand and interpret various characters and their motives
• Understanding nonlinear narrative structures such as foreshadowing and flashbacks
• Identify and explore the effects of narrative tone and bias in reading fiction
• Characters as archetypes, symbols, and metaphors
• How to develop literary arguments inside a broader context of works

Day 7: Short Fiction III

In unit 7 you will look at how various works of fiction interact with and comment on the world around them and the society or period that their authors lived or are living in.

The various skills that you will practice include:

• Explore sudden or gradual alterations in characters
• Using epiphany as a plot driving tool
• The relationships between various characters and groups
• Understanding character interactions with various settings
• Explore the significance of the pacing of a given narrative
• Using setting as symbology
• Learn how to interpret texts within their societal and historical context

Day 8: Poetry III

Next you will begin to develop your interpretation of poetry and examine how ambiguous language, contrasts and various other techniques can effectively add layers of meaning to a piece of poetry.

The various skills that you will practice include:

• Look at the way in which punctuation and structural patterns affect poetry
• Interpret paradox, irony, and juxtaposition
• Learn how ambiguity can encourage multiple interpretations
• Explore symbology, conceits, and allusions
• Learn how proper attribution and citation aids literary analysis

Day 9: Longer Fiction & Drama III

In unit 9 you will look at longer narratives and the context in which the various techniques and interpretations that you have learned help to build a nuanced analysis of each complex work.

The various skills that you will practice include:

• Explore characters and their response to a resolution within a narrative
• Understand suspense, plot development, and resolution
• Explore narrative inconsistencies and contrasting perspectives

Day 10: Quiz after revising the material

• Full revision
• Quiz