ENGLISH FOR ACADEMICS AND PROFESSIONAL PURPOSES●Learner’s Activity Sheet

Name: _______________________________ Date: _________

Grade and Section: _____________________ Score: _________

Q1
Models for Writing about Literature
Determines the ways a writer can elucidate on a concept CS_EN11/12A-EAPP-Ig-j-
W8
20

Let’s kick it off!

After watching a movie, the question often asked by friends is: “What is the story
about?” This might be true also to reading a book. However, in literature study, the more
important questions to ask are: “What is the meaning of the story?” “What was the author
trying to say?” “What is the structure of the story?” It’s quite obvious that to become efficient
in this study, one needs to pay attention to the literary elements.

Are you taking it?

All methods of inquiry into literature require critical reading and critical thinking. The
uniqueness of literary inquiry compared to other disciplines is that it sometimes includes the
reaction or response to the work being studied. A student is expected to reflect knowledge
of the work and must be thorough, well-reasoned, and well-supported by evidence.
Robb, Laura. Reader’s Handbook: A Student Guide for Reading and Learning. Massachusetts: Houghton Mifflin Co.,
2002.
What concept can be developed from the activity?

The types of papers about literature include:

1. A reaction paper is an essay in which a student responds to a work of literature.
This involves answering the central question of a particular work or present a problem that
the student sees in the work. Here the student is required to use quotations as evidence for
reactions.

2. A book report first informs readers about the content of a book, using summary.
This summary is followed by a discussion of the purpose and significance of the book, its
structure and style. In the discussion of the book’s significance, one might relate it to his/her
field of study.

3. An interpretation discusses on of two things: what you think the author means
by the work or what the work means personally to you. Here are things to keep in mind
when writing an interpretation paper:
1. What is the theme of the work?
2. How are particular parts of the work related to the theme?
3. If patterns exist in various elements of the work, what do they mean?
 4. What message does the author convey through the use of major aspects of the
work (e.g. plot, theme, structure, characterization, setting, point of view)?
5. Why does the work end as it does?
While many teachers require students to use the FIRST PERSON (I, we, our) when
they are writing their personal point of view; they want students to use the THIRD PERSON
(he, she, it, they) for all other content.

Use the present tense when you describe or discuss a literary work or any of its
elements. The same is also observed when discussing what the author has done in specific
work. In contrast, use the past-tense verb to discuss historical events or biographical
information.

Very seldom will assignments ask for personal ideas about a subject of your essay.
Most assignments require students supporting their ideas using secondary sources.
Secondary sources include books and articles in which an expert discusses material related
to your topic.

The following model essay by Valerie Cuenco interprets a plot element in Edgar Allan
Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart”.

Born in 1809, Edgar Allan Poe was a journalist, poet, and fiction writer of some prominence. In his

Valerie Cuenco
English 4A
Leyte Colleges
February 2002

The Sound of a Murderous Heart

In Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The Tell-Tale Heart,” several interpretations are possible as to the
source of the beating heart that causes the narrator-murderer to reveal himself to the police. The noise could
simply be a product of the narrator’s obviously deranged mind. Or perhaps the murder victim’s spirit lingers,
heart beating, to exact revenge upon the narrator. Although either of these interpretations is possible, most of
the evidence in the story suggests that the inescapable beating heart that haunts the narrator is his own.

The interpretation that the heartbeat stems from some kind of auditory hallucination is flawed. The
narrator is clearly insane--- his killing a kind old man because of an “Evil Eye” demonstrates this--- and his
psychotic behavior is more than sufficient cause for readers to question his truthfulness. Even so, nowhere
else in the story does the narrator imagine things that do not exist. Nor is it likely that he would intentionally
attempt to mislead us since the narrative is a confessional monologue through which he tries to explain and
justify his actions. He himself describes his “disease” as a heightening of his senses, not of his imagination.
Moreover, his highly detailed account of the events surrounding the murder seems to support this claim. Near
the end of the story, he refutes his notion that he is inventing the sound in his mind when he says, “I found
that the noise was not within my ears” (792). Although the narrator’s reliability is questionable, there seems to
be no reason to doubt this particular observation.

short life, Poe gambled, drank, lived in terrible poverty, saw his young wife die of tuberculosis, and died himself
of mysterious circumstances at age forty. Poe is credited for creating the detective novel and wrote short stories
that continue to be studied today.

Interpreting the heartbeat as the victim’s ghostly retaliation against the narrator also presents
difficulties. Perhaps most important, when the narrator first hears the heart, the old man is still alive. The
structure of the story also argues against the retaliation interpretation. Poe uses the first-person point of view
to give readers immediate access to the narrator’s strange thought processes, a choice that suggests the
story is a form of psychological study. If “The Tell-Tale Heart” were truly a ghost story, it would probably be
told in the third person, and it would more fully develop the character of the old man and explore his
relationship with the narrator. If the heartbeat that torments the narrator is his own, however, these
inconsistencies are avoided.
The strongest evidence that the tell-tale heart is really the narrator’s is the timing of the heartbeat.
Although it is the driving force behind the entire story, the narrator hears the beating heart only twice. In both
of these instances, he is under immense physical and psychological stress---times when his own heart would
be pounding. The narrator first hears the heartbeat with the shock of realizing that he has accidentally
awakened his intended victim:

Meantime the hellish tattoo of the heart increased.

It grew quicker and quicker, and louder every instant.
The old man’s terror must have been extreme!
It grew louder, I say, louder every moment!—do you mark me well?
I have told you that I am nervous: so I am.
And now at the dead hour of the night, amid the dreadful silence of the old house,
so strange a noise as this excited me to uncontrollable terror. (791)

As the narrator’s anxiety increases, so does the volume and frequency of the sound, an event easily
explained if the heartbeat is his own. Also, the sound of the heart persists even after the old man is dead,
fading slowly into the background, as the murderer’s own heartbeat would after his short, violent struggle with
the old man. This reasoning can also explain why the narrator did not hear the heart on any of the seven
previous nights when he looked into the old man’s bedchamber. Because the old man slept and the “Evil
Eye” was closed, no action was necessary (according to the narrator-murderer’s twisted logic), and therefore,
he did not experience the rush of adrenaline that set his heart pounding on the fatal eighth visit.

The heart also follows a predictable pattern at the end of the story when police officers come to
investigate a neighbor’s report of the dying old man’s scream. In this encounter, the narrator’s initial calm
slowly gives way to irritation and fear. As he becomes increasingly agitated, he begins to hear the heart
again. The narrator closely identifies it as the same sound he heard previously, as shown by the almost
word-for-word repetition of the language he uses to describe it, calling it “a low, dull, quick sound—much
such a sound as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton” [Poe’s emphasis] (792). As the narrator-
murderer focuses his attention on the sound, which ultimately overrides all else, his panic escalates until,
ironically, he is betrayed by the very senses that he boasted about at the start of the story.

Work Cited
Poe, Edgar Allan. “The Tell-Tale Heart.” American Literature: A Prentice Hall
Anthology. Vol.1. Ed. Emory Elliott, Linda K. Kerber, A. Walton Litz, and Terence Martin.
Englewood Cliffs: Prentice, 1991. 798-92.
 Now, do it!
Directions: Please answer both the Study Guide Question (s), and the Output (s) of each
lesson using intermediate paper. Because the subject is a technical writing course, you are
expected to demonstrate application of your writing skills. In answering, indicate your
complete name (Family Name, First Name, Middle Initial), your grade and section in
CAPITAL LETTERS. Indicate the lesson number, date, the study guide question, and output
accordingly as you go along.

Study Guide(s):
1. Observe the first paragraph. How did the writer start her essay?
2. What did the writer do in paragraph 2?
3. What did the writer highlight in paragraph 3?
4. How did the writer present her evidence?
5. What do you think the highlighted lines in quotations/numbers are for?
6. How important is critical reading and critical thinking in writing a good essay?

Model for Analyzing Characters in a Drama

Analyzing characters typically requires students to describe the character in the

context of the story. This can be fulfilled by analyzing the relationship between the character
in question and other characters. The following essay analyzes actions and interactions of
the male and female characters in Trifles, a one-act play written by Susan Glaspell (1882-
1948). Glaspel was a feminist and social activist who wrote many plays for the
Provincetown Players, a theater company she cofounded on Cape Cod, in Massachusetts.
She wrote Trifles in 1916, four years before women were allowed to vote in the United
States.

After reading Trifles, Philip De Veyra commented that “No male today could get away
with what the men in that play said.” Encouraged to analyze that reaction further, he wrote
this essay in 2002.
 Philip De Veyra
English 4A
Leyte Colleges
November 2007
Gender Loyalties: A Theme in Trifles
Susan’s Glaspell’s play Trifles is a study of character even though the two characters most central to
the drama never appear on stage. By excluding Minnie and John Wright from the stage as speaking
characters, Glaspell forces us to learn about them through the observations and recollections of the group
visiting the farmhouse where the murders of Minnie Wright’s canary and of John Wright took place. By
indirectly rounding out her main characters, Glaspell invites us to view them not merely as individuals but also
as representatives in a conflict between the sexes. This conflict grows throughout the play as characters’
emotions and sympathies become increasingly polarized and oriented in favor of their own gender. From this
perspective, each of the male characters can be seen to stand for the larger political, legal, and domestic
power structures that drive Minnie Wright to kill her husband.
George Henderson’s speaking the first line of the play is no accident. Although his power stems
from his position as country attorney, Henderson represents the political, more than the legal, sphere. With a
job similar to a city prosecutor, he is quite powerful even though he was the youngest person present. He
takes control of the action, telling the other characters when to speak and when not to and directing the men
in their search for evidence that will establish a motive for the murder. As the person in charge of the
investigation, George Henderson orders the other characters about. Mrs. Peters acknowledges his skill at
oratory when she predicts that Minnie Wright will be convicted in the wake of his “sarcastic” cross-examination
(speech 63).
Glaspell reveals much of the conflict in the play through the heated (but civil) exchanges between
George Henderson and Mrs. Hale. His behavior (according to the stage directions that the gallant young
Subject
politician) does notinmask
literature refers
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of Minnie things:
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of women inand abstract. Concreate subject
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the meaning of the story?”
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to the sink, takesSome stories
a dipperful of wateruse
flashback in presenting sequence of events, while others are presented
from the pail, and pouring it into the basin, washes his hands. Starts to wipe them on the roller-towel, turns it in a straight
chronological
to a cleaner place.]order.
Dirty towels! [Kicks his foot against the pans under the sink.] Not much of a
housekeeper, would you say, ladies? (speeches 29-31)
Then
As thethere is shows,
excerpt Point of View.
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Henderson in literature,
seems to hold the student
that a woman’s place is inwill
the take note
kitchen, evenof
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much emotion point of discovery
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apparent that his own sense of self-importance and prejudicial views of women are distracting him from his
Malarkey, Stoddard, Drake, B., McRae, D. Viewpoints in Literature. USA: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1969.
real business at the farmhouse.
Sheriff Henry Peters, as his title suggests, represents the legal power structure. Just like the county
attorney, he is quick to dismiss the “trifles” that his wife and Mrs. Hale spend their time discussing while the
men conduct a physical search of the premises. When the sheriff overhears the women talking about the
quilt, his instinctive reaction is to ridicule them, saying, “They wonder if she was going to quit it or just knot
Now,
it!”(speech 73) do it!
Of course, the fact that Minnie Wright was going to knot the quilt is probably the single most
important piece of evidence that the group could uncover, as John Wright was strangled by what we deduce
Directions: Please answer both the Study Guide Question (s), and the Output (s) of each lesson
is a quilting
using knot. Although
intermediate paper. heBecause
understands
the the law, the
subject is sheriff seems to
a technical know very
writing little you
course, of people, and this to
are expected
prevents him application
demonstrate from crackingofthe case.
your writing skills. In answering, indicate your complete name (Family
Rounding out the male characters, is Lewis Hale, a husband and farmer who represents the
domestic sphere. Although not an ideal individual, he provides a strong foil for John Wright’s character. We
Name, First Name, Middle Initial), your grade and section in CAPITAL LETTERS. Indicate the lesson
number, date, the study guide question, and output accordingly as you go along.
.
Study Guide/Output (s):

(Continuation)
The great irony of the drama is that the women are able to accomplish what the men cannot: They
establish the motive for the murder. They find evidence suggesting that John Wright viciously killed his
wife’s canary---her sole companion through long days of work around the house. More important, they
recognize the damaging nature of the marriage based on the unequal status of the participants. Mrs. Hale
and Mrs. Peters decide not to help the case against Minnie Wright, not because her husband killed a bird,
but because he isolated her, made her life miserable for years, and cruelly destroyed her one source of
comfort. Without help from various misogynistic, paternalistic, and uncomprehending political, legal, and
domestic power structures surrounding her, Minnie Wright took the law into her own hands. As the
characters of George Henderson, Henry Peters, and Lewis Hale demonstrate, she clearly could not expect
understanding from the men in her community.

Work Cited
Glaspell, Susan. Trifles. Literature: An Introduction to Reading and Writing.
4th ed. Ed. Edgar V. Roberts and Henry Jacobs. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice, 1995.
1038-48.

Now, do it!
Directions: Please answer both the Study Guide Question (s), and the Output (s) of each
lesson using intermediate paper. Because the subject is a technical writing course, you are
expected to demonstrate application of your writing skills. In answering, indicate your
complete name (Family Name, First Name, Middle Initial), your grade and section in
CAPITAL LETTERS. Indicate the lesson number, date, the study guide question, and output
accordingly as you go along.

Study Guide/Output (s):

1. How did the writer describe the characters in the drama?

Ace It!

Directions: On a yellow paper, answer the question comprehensively.

1. What important lesson have you learned in writing a concept paper for literature?

 Writing a concept paper for literature has taught me that it decides the various
methods in which a writer can illuminate a concept through definition,
explication, and clarification. It highlights scenarios in which a concept paper
could be useful in improving society. I now grasp the ideas and applications of
 concept paper as a student. I can now write a well-balanced concept paper in
a specific discipline because I've learnt this.

Scoring criteria for each item:

1. Articulation of ideas that are being assessed: 8 points
2. Logical presentation of ideas: 8 points
3. Correctness of grammar and form in writing: 4 points

Total: 20 points