Final Exam in class Friday, May 7th.
There will be four sections.
Essay-review lesson on perusaision we did around Obama's speech
Reading Comprehension- On one of the topics we discussed in class. Review vocabulary that goes with these topics.
Excuses- Based on the lesson about art theifs. You will have to use the past tenses correctly.
Describing Personality- Based on the birth order lesson and the lesson on applying for jobs.
For those who said you were interested in babysitting on June 18th or 19th for English speaking children, could you please contact me by email at njs2g@virginia.edu.
I'd also like to thank you for being a particulary agreable group to work with this semester. I feel the animated dynamic among you is really bennificial for your language education. If you stay together in L2, I encourgage you to maintain that dynamic. And finally, a word about speaking English versus speaking French in classes. You have done quite a good job getting used to speaking only English to me and to each other while in class. The major execption is when you are in small groups to prepare something to present to the class together. There, you have a tendancy to slip into French. I think talking about what you're going to say is one of the places where we most want to revert to our native language. I encourage you to be aware of that tendancy and try to eliminate it as you continue. If you succeed there, you will be not only a very good group but an outstanding group.
I hope you enjoy your break and good luck preparing for exams.
Friday, April 16, 2010
L1 Lit: Final Exam
Final Exam: Wednesday, May 19th. 9-11:00 a.m. Amphi. 500 Bat. T.
For your final exam you will have the choice between two questions: one will be a texual commentary of a passage from Betrayal. The other will be a "dissertation" style question that asks you to treat one of the major themes or questions that the play raises. Because we are now giving a common exam for all sections, there will NOT be a section on the staging vocabulary I presented the first week we discussed Pinter. I do encourage you though to keep that list of terms because they will be useful for theater discussions in your future literature classes.
In the next few days, I will post a list on the site with your preparation grades and your grade for DST1. Please verify that I have accurately recroded your grades. It is very easy, for everybody, to correct any mistakes now. Corrections become very difficult and involved after I turn in grades to the exam office. If you have any questions, you can contact me by email. Good luck preparing for this and all the rest of your exams.
For your final exam you will have the choice between two questions: one will be a texual commentary of a passage from Betrayal. The other will be a "dissertation" style question that asks you to treat one of the major themes or questions that the play raises. Because we are now giving a common exam for all sections, there will NOT be a section on the staging vocabulary I presented the first week we discussed Pinter. I do encourage you though to keep that list of terms because they will be useful for theater discussions in your future literature classes.
In the next few days, I will post a list on the site with your preparation grades and your grade for DST1. Please verify that I have accurately recroded your grades. It is very easy, for everybody, to correct any mistakes now. Corrections become very difficult and involved after I turn in grades to the exam office. If you have any questions, you can contact me by email. Good luck preparing for this and all the rest of your exams.
Thursday, April 8, 2010
L1 Lit: Fitzgerald for April 13
Tuesday, April 13th will be the last day to turn in a written preparation.
First of all, I'd like to say before posting your last assignment that I have enjoyed discussing these texts with you over the past eleven weeks. Your comments have frequently showed me new aspects of the texts that I hadn't considered before our classes. I often leave on Tuesdays saying to myself "Oh, wow I wouldn't have thought that about Auden/Yeats/Whitman..." Thank you for sharing your ideas. As you continue with your literary studies, I encourage you to have confidence and to speak up and share your thoughts frequently with your classmates.
I also wanted to add a brief word about the value of the analytic techniques we have practiced over the semester. We have focused closely on the language of the text, but for me the final aim of this type of analysis is never limited strictly to an understanding of the text itself. We're talking, thinking, and writing about the way Pinter deals with time, the way Shakespeare deals with love, or the way Yeats deals with political upheaval because things like time, love, and political upheaval are often very difficult to understand all on our own. My main goal in approaching these texts with you is that our discussions will allow us to better grasp things like love, political upheaval, or time. I hope your reading and thinking this semester has taught you things about these subjects that you didn't know when the semester started. For those of you who are interested in the relationship between textual analysis and literature teaching us about the world we live in, I highly recommend this article that talks specifically about the French education system.
Todorov, Tzvetan. "What Is Literature For?". New Literary History: A Journal of Theory and Interpretation: 38.1 ( 2007 Winter), pp. 13-32.
If you'd like to write on a more general topic for this coming week, you can read the article and write a 250 to 500 word response to Todorov's ideas about the value of literature and structural analysis. I can send you a PDF file of the article if you contact me at njs2g@virginia.edu.
I'd like as well to comment on my choice of poems for the semester. When selecting the titles we studied, I realized quickly that it would be impossible to study all the poems I had in mind in only 6 weeks. I wanted to give you the titles of several other poems that I considered including in the course. All the poems I chose and the ones I had to leave out are poems that I personally enjoy reading and rereading.
T.S. Eliot The Love Song of J.Alfred Prufrock
Edgar Allan Poe The Raven
Eavan Bolan What Language Did
W.B Yeats The Circus Animals' Desertion
Emily Dickinson
Beck The Golden Age
And for the poetry/prose day
The last page of Ulysses by James Joyce
The "Addie" chapter in William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying.
If you did not turn in a preparation on poetry, you have a last chance this week to make up that grade. You can write a 250-500 word analysis of one of these poems to avoid having a 0 averaged into your grade.
Finally, if you would like to write on The Great Gatsby, analyze in 250 to 500 words one of the following topics: Success, money, the role of women, Fitzgerald's style, war, excess, or conversation.
First of all, I'd like to say before posting your last assignment that I have enjoyed discussing these texts with you over the past eleven weeks. Your comments have frequently showed me new aspects of the texts that I hadn't considered before our classes. I often leave on Tuesdays saying to myself "Oh, wow I wouldn't have thought that about Auden/Yeats/Whitman..." Thank you for sharing your ideas. As you continue with your literary studies, I encourage you to have confidence and to speak up and share your thoughts frequently with your classmates.
I also wanted to add a brief word about the value of the analytic techniques we have practiced over the semester. We have focused closely on the language of the text, but for me the final aim of this type of analysis is never limited strictly to an understanding of the text itself. We're talking, thinking, and writing about the way Pinter deals with time, the way Shakespeare deals with love, or the way Yeats deals with political upheaval because things like time, love, and political upheaval are often very difficult to understand all on our own. My main goal in approaching these texts with you is that our discussions will allow us to better grasp things like love, political upheaval, or time. I hope your reading and thinking this semester has taught you things about these subjects that you didn't know when the semester started. For those of you who are interested in the relationship between textual analysis and literature teaching us about the world we live in, I highly recommend this article that talks specifically about the French education system.
Todorov, Tzvetan. "What Is Literature For?". New Literary History: A Journal of Theory and Interpretation: 38.1 ( 2007 Winter), pp. 13-32.
If you'd like to write on a more general topic for this coming week, you can read the article and write a 250 to 500 word response to Todorov's ideas about the value of literature and structural analysis. I can send you a PDF file of the article if you contact me at njs2g@virginia.edu.
I'd like as well to comment on my choice of poems for the semester. When selecting the titles we studied, I realized quickly that it would be impossible to study all the poems I had in mind in only 6 weeks. I wanted to give you the titles of several other poems that I considered including in the course. All the poems I chose and the ones I had to leave out are poems that I personally enjoy reading and rereading.
T.S. Eliot The Love Song of J.Alfred Prufrock
Edgar Allan Poe The Raven
Eavan Bolan What Language Did
W.B Yeats The Circus Animals' Desertion
Emily Dickinson
Beck The Golden Age
And for the poetry/prose day
The last page of Ulysses by James Joyce
The "Addie" chapter in William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying.
If you did not turn in a preparation on poetry, you have a last chance this week to make up that grade. You can write a 250-500 word analysis of one of these poems to avoid having a 0 averaged into your grade.
Finally, if you would like to write on The Great Gatsby, analyze in 250 to 500 words one of the following topics: Success, money, the role of women, Fitzgerald's style, war, excess, or conversation.
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
L1 Lang: Relax for April 9
For this week, you have no reading or listening activity to prepare for class. You have a stressful few weeks approaching with your exams after the vaccation. So instead of spending an extra hour working, I'd like you to spend an hour doing something you enjoy that has nothing to do with school.
Remember that you have your listening exam in class on April 16th and that you have your final exam for the class on May 7th.
Remember that you have your listening exam in class on April 16th and that you have your final exam for the class on May 7th.
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