The course is designed to teach students the basic skills required in reading, understanding and interpreting stories, poems and plays written in, or translated into, English. The first semester is devoted to fiction, while the second is divided between poetry and drama. In the study of each genre a general outline of development is introduced, followed by close textual/textural reading of individual works, which are selected to provide representative samples of the major types, i.e. both realistic and non-realistic stories and plays; and poems employing traditional or modern techniques.