Course Overview
1. Content: Literary Elements
This introductory course to literature is a one-year required course designed for first-year students at DFLL and covers three literary genres: fiction, poetry and drama. The main focus of this course is two-fold. On the one hand, it aims at familiarizing students with the basic elements of each of the three genres and preparing students for more advanced literature courses such as survey or genre courses in the future. Two-thirds of the fall semester is devoted to examining elements of fiction (weeks 1-10), and the remaining weeks to exploring elements of poetry (weeks 11-15).

2. Forms:
On the other hand, this course aims at training students’ cognitive skills, particularly analytical skill. Therefore, besides teacher-centered lectures that shall demonstrate how to understand, appreciate and analyze a text intensively, there will be time for small group discussions in class and 3 types of writing assignments, including “Response”, “In-Class Writing” and “Essay.” Worksheets with study questions are provided to guide and focus students’ attention to important issues. Students are encouraged to contemplate the study questions in preview, lectures, and small group discussion, and learn to form their own answers in the process and present them in good writing.

3. Evaluation:
There are no exams for this course; evaluation includes three types of writing assignments. Firstly, students have to share 3 “Responses” (2 on fiction and 1 on poetry) in the “Discussion” section (on NTU Cool) for the TA to grade. Secondly, in “In-Class Writing” (1 on fiction and 1 on poetry), students have to answer one set of randomly assigned questions in 60 minutes in class. Thirdly, students are required to write 2 well-organized “Essays” (at least 800 words each) on one or two texts chosen from the syllabus.