ATS1903: Introducing Literature: Ways of Reading

Close reading exercise: 10%
Essay: 30%
Class exercise on translation: 10%
Moodle quiz on using sources and library: 10%
Exam: 40%

Attendance at tutes is compulsory! In other words you have to attend 3/4 of the tutes otherwise you need a medical cert/a really good explanation/etc.

I wasn't going to write a review but having looked at the last review on the thread, there's been a few changes in the unit since, so hey, let's keep things updated! I really wanted to like this unit but I feel that it's one of the most wishy-washy of arts subjects that I have taken so far, and so I couldn't really take it seriously.

I felt that the lectures varied in quality: some were really good, and others just dragged no matter how much I tried to pay attention. It's a bit of pot luck, depending on who the lecturer is for the week, but the unit itself is pretty well structured. If you took Lit in VCE you won't mind this unit too much but if you come from mainstream English I think you'll struggle a bit with stuff like passage analysis. It doesn't mean you can't do well though!

There are far fewer texts this semester as opposed to last time the unit ran. This is both an advantage and a disadvantage. Previously, if you didn't like a text, you could just wait for next week and you'd have a new one, and there were so many options in the exam that you could just choose to focus on a select few texts. This time you actually have to make an effort to read more of them. For the essay you either have to write on the ballads in the unit reader or Hamlet, and then in the exam you had to write on whichever text you didn't write your essay on, AND do a comparative essay on two out of three of the remaining texts. So you can afford to skip ONE text, and that's really it. So make sure you do your readings!

The exam was fairly straight forward. Like I said there's two parts to it. My only main beef was that there were no past exams and we didn't have any sample topics or anything like that. My method of preparing was to make guesses on parallels between the set texts and to brainstorm some points based on that, and it ended up serving me pretty well.

I felt that the assessments were generally fair. The first assessment was a relatively straight forward passage analysis on Hamlet. If you're a lit kid you'll find it easy, the only thing that threw me was how LONG the passage was and short the word count was. Alas. I found a similar problem when it came to the class exercise on translation, where you were given several translations of the same text (for us, Metamorphosis) and we had to write a commentary on how they differed. For both of these assessments you get tute time to work on it, then you write it up at home.

Like I said, the essay was either on Hamlet or the ballads in the unit reader. There's a fair few topics to choose from, but I found this essay a bit of a bitch to write, but it's probably because all of my arts essays except for this are more, um, 'science-based'. If you treat it as if you would an English essay in high school but with citations you'll probably be fine.

Moodle quiz was piss easy, you can have the quiz and the moodle resource open at the same time, so it's more a test of how well you can proofread and find information, but it does teach you how to reference and use the library if you do not already know how to do so.

Take this unit if you really care about literature. Don't do this unit thinking it's a bludge: it isn't. I took this unit only because I need a first year Arts sequence . In hindsight, not the best idea. Oops.

Peter Groves and various other people depending on what the topic was.

Nope. Maybe there are some in the past exams database but they're not relevant. We had to make educated guesses of what we thought would be on the exam and prepare accordingly.

2.5 out of 5

Yes

Unit Reader, Hamlet, That Deadman Dance by Kim Scott, Metamorphosis and Other Stories by Kafka, Therese Raquin by Emilie Zola.
There were various editions and whatnot that you were supposed to buy, and because this is a jaffy unit just about everyone bought the correct editions presumably from the bookshop (lol). But because I'm a rebel and all I used my own copy of Hamlet and Therese Raquin and acquired second hand versions that were the wrong edition for everything else. They made a big deal about having the correct 'translation' or whatever but I personally think it didn't matter in the end. Unit reader is cheap and useful, because they had all the poems in the one place, which is good for lazy people like me.

2 x 1 hour lectures per week
1 x 1 hour tute per week

2014 semester 1

• Lectures: Peter is a very brilliant man. Seriously, you look into his eyes, and they scream at you "Hello, I am a set of very intelligent eyes". He is quite charismatic and has a wonderful Pommy accent that makes listening to him talk a pleasure. I think there were many people in my tutorial that got quite frustrated and his tendency to mumble or speak extremely quickly. He does try to fit an extreme amount of content into each lecture, and often runs out of time. However, I didn't take notes during the lectures, so his tendency to speak fast didn't bother me at all. I just sort of sat there and basked in the genius, and tried to soak in as much as possible. So I like him a lot, but some others didn't, despite agreeing he's a genius. *Pro tip: Peter is a freak for language. He's written a book on meter (language) and loves iambic pentameter etc, so if you find yourself in one of his tutes, discussing language will get you a long way. There were also two other lecturers in this unit who I found really good. I only experienced these three lecturers, but I think there's five or six in total.
• *Attention to guys who didn't take Lit in VCE* -- I also went into this unit having only done mainstream English. Subsequently, I had not a clue as to how to write a passage analysis for AT1 (or the exam, for that matter, hahaha). Check the Lit boards on this website for EZ's recommendations, and check the sample essays he and others have posted up. You should also be able to email your tutor and request to meet them in their consultation hour and have them teach you how to write a passage analysis. Me being a total jaffy, I didn't even know this was an option, and proceeding to totally guess the passage analysis which resulted in my first and only credit for any unit this semester. Cry cry cry. You'll definitely want to get someone to teach you passage analyses before the exam; my exam was yesterday, and it was only yesterday morning that I searched the forums to ensure I wasn't totally screwed. The essay I approached as I would with any normal VCE text-response essay and used my old style/structure. I ended up with 78 - a big improvement from the passage analysis - so I assume this approach is fine to use. I should note: the tutors in this subject are very experienced writers and readers. You cannot bullshit them. It would be difficult to rush an essay at the last minute and hope to score a good mark. I wrote my essay over a 48 hour period, and the subsequent expression flaws were sliced through with a red hot blade (in the form of red pen... metaphorically) by my tutor.
• The Unit is very well structured. It takes you through romanticism, realism, naturalism, modernism - and certainly some other isms which I ended up skipping. It does this in a way that your learning can build off the prior forms of learning, as there are many interconnections between styles, or reasons that the styles are the way they are due to the styles that preceded them.
• Take this unit if you are passionate about Literature. Take this unit if it will help you grow as a person or otherwise give you something by nature of the learning. If you only care about your GPA, and you don't want to 'get anything' out of your degree that Lit might be able to offer you, I would seek out an easier unit. I'm taking this unit because I need a Lit minor in order to be a qualified English teacher, however, I occasionally appreciated what I could 'get' from the unit. The lectures I did go through were fulfilling and inspiring, and the lectures I didn't go to, well, I wasn't all that heartbroken, despite missing some undoubtedly interesting opportunities to learn things, sometimes it just didn't assist with the ATs (or maybe they did and I could have done better).
• The readings. Each week, you will have a text to read. Not necessarily of full length. For example, I think we first read Hamlet, then Northanger Abbey, then nine chapters of Don Quixote, then some poems, and some short-plays or short stories somewhere in there which I'm pretty sure no one read. Throughout this unit I read one play and four novels, which suited me just fine, but there is probably readings you are supposed to do each week, most of which will never be directly assessed (though you could choose to do a poem on the essay etc). I really do recommend reading on the holidays to lower your load, as nearing the end of the semester I was one of very few left still managing to read the entirety of the novels prior to the tutorial

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• I would just like to reiterate: Do not take this unit because you think you did great in VCE English and it will be a breeze. You will wake up with a really sore backside if you decide to take the unit for that reason. It is simply not a breeze. Only take this unit if you are passionate about Lit. That said, it might be a bit breezier for the VCE Lit people, as you will be much more familiar with the passage analyses and poems and stuff.

Dr Peter Groves is the main lecturer, but they change frequently corresponding to their level of expertise in relation to the current topic (realism, modernism etc). I only listened to two other lectures other than ones of Peter's, and both of those lecturers are nice, but I'd have no idea who they are.

That's a negatory. However, you can practice with the essay prompts from AT 3 - which are highly relevant, as many of the same texts will be on the exam.

3/5

Yeah, with screen capture.

If you want to be dodgy, you don't need to buy the Unit Reader. I bought the Reader and to be honest, I used it once, to read nine chapters of Don Quixote - the nine chapters were contained within the Reader, evidently. Otherwise, the reader is full of poems that you're supposed to read, but they don't discuss in the tutorials or lectures. Reading these poems would probably greatly enhance your understanding of the material. Perhaps not, I honestly have no idea due to not having read them. There are also novels that you need to read, but don't need to buy. You could easily source them from any local library, as they're relatively famous novels. You could theoretically get away with not reading Hamlet and just SparkNotes-ing the passage they give you - but good luck with that. Moreover, you could theoretically read zero novels this entire unit and still pass the exam, as you could look at the exam specifications, choose poems for comparison and analysis, and then Google the poems. This is likely a recipe for failure. I recommend finding out the booklist ahead of time, borrowing the books in February and reading some of them then. This will significantly decrease your workload.

2 x 1 hour lectures (auto-allocated), 1 x 1 hour tutorial.

2013, Semester 1.

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