CONTACT PROGRAMME 2016

Hello all!

The PGCTE contact programme-cum-examinations for the year 2016 will be held from 21 June to 19 July. All those who have submitted assignments on time will be getting the invitation letter shortly.

Evaluated assignments are also being sorted and dispatched....so you will get them back soon as well!

We look forward to seeing you all here!

For any further queries, you can write to the Programme Coordinator, Anish Koshy.

anish@efluniversity.ac.in

UGC Recognition

For those interested, here is the letter from the UGC according recognition to The EFLU's distance-mode programmes.  Those who would like a pdf copy by e-mail, please drop me a line at this ID:  lavanya@efluniversity.ac.in

PGCTE Contact Programme 2013

Hello all!

The PGCTE contact programme-cum-examinations for 2013 will be held from 19 June 2013 to 18 16 July 2013.

Important info:

The deadline for submission of all PGCTE assignments - 28 February 2013 - is over.

Those of you who have submitted all the 33 assignments by the above date are provisionally eligible to attend the contact programme. You will be issued invitation letters which should reach you in the first week of May or thereabouts.

My colleague Mr. Anish Koshy, from the Dept of Linguistics and Phonetics, has put up a provisional eligibility list on his website, which you can view here: https://sites.google.com/site/eflupgcte/useful-links/provisional-eligibility-list

Corrected assignments are being dispatched and you will be receiving them all through the month of May. Mr. Anish Koshy has also put up some useful information regarding how the grades for your assignments are calculated, which you can view here: https://sites.google.com/site/eflupgcte/useful-links/eligibility

I have been receiving queries about the Literature question paper pattern. You will be given a sample/model paper when you arrive here for the contact programme. So please don't worry about it for now.

The coordinators for the programme:

Prof. Mahaswetha Sengupta (Academic Coordinator)

Dr. B. Venkat Rao & Dr. S. Vishnu Priya (Hospitality Coordinators)

For any further queries, do drop me a line here.

More Assignment Grades

Hello everyone!

I've put up some more assignment grades on my website, check it out here:
https://sites.google.com/site/lavanyaslitcourseseflu/courses/pgcte-interpretation-of-literature/moreassignmentgrades

The assignments are all pouring in now from our external evaluators, and we're monitoring them as they come in, so I'll put up more when the School office gives me more.

I assume most of you must have got the invitation letters for the contact programme by now, those who are eligible that is. I hope you've booked your tickets.

We look forward to meeting y'all!

Provisional Eligibility List for the Contact Programme

Hello all!

A provisional list of participants eligible for the Contact Programme to be held in June-July 2012 has been put up on the PGCTE web site here: http://sites.google.com/site/eflupgcte/useful-links/provisional-eligibility-list

Please check it out.

Literature Assignments

I've been receiving emails from some participants asking for 'tips' on answering the PGCTE literature assignments; so rather than write separate emails to everyone, I'm putting up here some suggestions that all of you might find useful.

To start with, here's a comment on the About page of this blog:

I had received a comment from the evaluator after grading one of my literature papers - "its more of a summary than interpretation". 

To be able to explain the evaluator's comment "more of a summary than interpretation", I'd have to read the answers in the assignment, but perhaps some of you have received similar comments on one or more of your assignments? This is a rather common issue in the assignments we receive for this course— the tendency to provide plot summaries/poem paraphrases  and author biographies as (or instead of!) answers. Notice that your assignments ask you to comment on a specific aspect of a poem/play/novel, or to interpret it in a certain manner; you will never get a question asking you to summarize a novel or to narrate the life-history of its author! So your answers should focus on the question.

Of course it's not easy to say what a 'good interpretation' of a poem/play/novel should be—any more than it is to say what a good poem/play/novel is! There is an element of subjectivity in both. So then is it possible to give a step-by-step procedure, a manual, on how to write analyses/ interpretations of literature?

In the course material, you would have seen that for each genre (poetry, fiction, drama) we have attempted to provide some broad parameters, a framework, for analyzing a piece in that genre. For instance, the Block on drama gives you an Aristotelian framework for analyzing a play. Now, you may think that Aristotle is outdated, but the elements of this framework are still relevant today: in reading a play, we unravel its plot/narrative (mythos); we analyze the way in which language  is used by the characters and the playwright (lexis); we try and relate the events and/or theme(s) in the play to the age and culture in which it is set (ethos); we look at how the stage settings and presentation of the play might affect our response to it (opsis); and finally we want to be able to say what effect the play has on us, what ideology/message it seems to convey (dianoia).  Right? Similarly the Block on poetry describes a set of parameters that you can use to analyze and interpret a poem: the diction and syntax of a poem, its rhythmic patterns, imagery, etc. These are the tools with which you are expected to interpret a piece of literature.  The best way to check for yourself whether you have understood these tools is to try them out in a text.  Pick up a play, read it, and then see if you can locate in it the elements of the framework provided in the Block on drama. Merely reading the course material is not going to make you 'adept' at interpreting literature. You must test your understanding with a variety of texts. 

Now, regarding how to write your answers. Every discipline has its own conventions/style format when it comes to writing. That's why we speak of legal writing, scientific writing, journalistic writing, creative writing, etc. Writing essays/answers in literature also requires a certain style, format, and perhaps even jargon (for higher, research-level essays). In the arts and humanities disciplines, the style most commonly used is the MLA Style based on the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers and the MLA Style Manual and Guide to Scholarly Publishing in Literature. You can read about them here. This style manual is also available as a book (with the same name) which you can purchase in any good bookstore.

And here are some reliable websites with useful guidelines for writing in literature: 

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/section/4/17/

http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/composition/literature.htm

http://www.gmc.edu/students/arc/documents/Literary%20analysis.pdf

You'll find in these sites plenty of useful tips on how to write literature answers/essays. Do go through them and tell me what you think. 

Assignment Grades

I've put up some assignment grades which I've received from our external evaluators on the web site. Please go check it out: https://sites.google.com/site/lavanyaslitcourseseflu/courses/pgcte-interpretation-of-literature/assignmentgrades