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CCOG for ENG 106 Spring 2024

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Course Number:
ENG 106
Course Title:
Introduction to Literature (Poetry)
Credit Hours:
4
Lecture Hours:
40
Lecture/Lab Hours:
0
Lab Hours:
0

Course Description

Examines significant poems from diverse cultures and periods in history. Explores poetry as an art form designed to provoke thought and challenge social norms. Considers poetry as an expression of human experience. Prerequisites: (RD 115 and WR 115) or IRW 115 or equivalent placement. Audit available.

Intended Outcomes for the course

Upon completion of the course students should be able to:

  1. Analyze poetic texts to understand diverse points of view and diverse historical, cultural, and literary contexts.
  2. Analyze a variety of poetic forms, from sonnets to haiku to free verse, and identify and effectively employ poetic terms, including diction, sound, rhyme, rhythm, meter, imagery, symbolism, persona, etc.
  3. Explicate poems in writing and speech and provide adequate support/evidence for such explications.
  4. Identify the multiple possibilities of interpretations of poems and the validity thereof.
  5. Articulate ways in which the text contributes to self-understanding.
  6. Conduct research to find materials to use for literary analysis, using MLA conventions to document primary and secondary sources in written response to a literary text.

Integrative Learning

Students completing an associate degree at Portland Community College will be able to reflect on one’s work or competencies to make connections between course content and lived experience.

General education philosophy statement

English and Writing courses align with the PCC General Education philosophy by providing an appreciation of writing and literature from global and personal perspectives. Students in English courses engage the imagination, critical inquiry and self‐reflection, and in the process of doing so, cultivate a more complex understanding of their own culture(s), linguistic/communication practices, and perspectives in relation to others. Because the literary arts lie at the heart of most human cultures, they are essential for understanding each other and navigating our differences. In literature classes, students explore significant texts from diverse cultures and periods in history. Students look closely at texts from a range of genres, articulating the way elements of writing, content, form, and style are interrelated, and considering how values and interpretations have changed over time and through different theoretical lenses. Students engage texts through critical analysis and creative response, learning to use evidence to support their interpretations and to navigate critical conversations. Students explore literature both as an art form designed to provoke thought and challenge social norms, and as an expression of human experience. Writing and Literature courses foster a stronger sense of engagement with history, culture, and society. Writing and Literature students develop an awareness of themselves as readers and writers in a global world, and an enlarged understanding of the relationships between language, identity, ideas, scholarship, communication, and transformation.

Outcome Assessment Strategies

Assessment tools may include informal responses to study questions; evaluation of small- and full-group discussions; in-class and out-of-class writing; formal essays and other types of informal writing; individual and group presentations; essay exams; close reading exercises using support/evidence; writing exercises which include evaluation of various interpretations of a text and their relative validity.  Both instructor and peer evaluation may be incorporated in the assessment process.

Course Content (Themes, Concepts, Issues and Skills)

Themes, Concepts, and Issues:

  • concrete imagery           
  • allusions
  • tension                  
  • enjambment
  • diction
  • imagination               
  • explication
  • symbol                   
  • cultural applications
  • metrics                   
  • interpretation
  • iambic                   
  • narrative poetry
  • trochaic               
  • epic poetry
  • dactyllic               
  • folk ballads
  • anapestic               
  • literary ballads
  • feet                  
  • sonnet
  • monometer         
  • villanelles
  • dimeter                   
  • haiku
  • trimeter               
  • rhyme
  • tetrameter               
  • alliteration
  • pentameter               
  • assonance   
  • line
  • consonance
  • stanza                   
  • free verse
  • couplet                   
  • tone
  • tercet                   
  • allusion
  • quatrain               
  • figurative language
  • sestet                   
  • caesuras
  • octave


Competencies and Skills

  • analysis
  • synthesis
  • close readings
  • understanding poetry through historical, political, artististic, and
  • critical contexts as well as employing the language of poetic
  • convention
  • writing about poetry
  • critical reading using reviews and critical essays
  • speaking and listening in a large group
  • speaking and listening relectively
  • small group collaboration
  • recognizing the difference between poetry and prose