English Literature

English Literature

Rationale

The study of Literature provides opportunities for students in the Express and Normal Academic courses to explore various types of literary texts to appreciate the ways in which writers view the world as well as how they express their ideas. By using the text as a window into multiple worlds, students navigate areas of human concern and achieve a greater understanding of themselves and others. Expectedly, the programme also helps students appreciate the power of words and its contribution to their aesthetic and imaginative growths.

Details of the Programme

In Swiss, Literature in English is offered in the Upper Secondary – both as a core and elective subject, in the Express and Normal Academic courses. Regardless of whether a student reads Literature as a discipline in the Upper Secondary course, they would, through the Lower Secondary programme:

• have read works from the three literary genres (i.e. poetry, prose and drama);
• have read literature from different parts of the world, including Singapore;
• be able to read a text independently;
• be able to critically analyse a text;
• be able to give a personal response to a text and its concerns; and
• be able to apply skills of literary appreciation to read new/unseen material.

Students are encouraged to explore the ideas in texts through reflective processes such as dialogue and writing as well as through connections with their worlds – through their own life experiences, other texts that they have encountered and the world at large.

Lower Secondary

Open book examinations are used in the Lower Secondary Literature Programme, i.e., to heighten the student focus on quality of thought relative to the use of memorisation and recall of information in the text. These alternative assessment modes are complemented with explorative questions, novel performance tasks, theatre exposure and the use of SOLO Taxonomy as a framework to organise discrete tasks for better synthesis and understanding of an entire text.

Upper Secondary

Thinking routines are used in Upper Secondary Literature programme to encourage independent thought and the construction of a well-considered response. Responses are co-constructed through group work, online and class discussions as well as close/ dramatic reading.

Year 1 – Introduction to Literature as a Discipline

• Close-Reading Skills and Literary Analysis
  • Appreciation of Stories
  • Appreciation of Poetry

Year 2 – Introduction to Drama and Poetry

• Close-Reading Skills and Literary Analysis
  • Appreciation of Drama
  • Appreciation of Poetry
  • Theatre Exposure

Year 3 and 4 – Preparation for the N and O levels

• Prose and The Unseen
• Drama (For Pure Literature Students Only)
• Theatre Exposure
• Enrichment (Targetted Seminars, Workshops)

The English Literature unit is a small cohesive unit made up of the following dynamic teachers