Please put your PowerPoint on the X-drive before 9:30 a.m. on the day you're assigned to present.  X://Teacher Folders/Rose/A2 or A4 Powerpoints. Be sure your last name appears in the file name.

Please put your PowerPoint on the X-drive before 9:30 a.m. on the day you're assigned to present.  X://Teacher Folders/Rose/A2 or A4 Powerpoints. Be sure your last name appears in the file name.

Actually "Holmesian Deduction" is inductive reasoning (rather than deductive reasoning). See chart below

During class today (Monday), you will be completing the Holmes & Watson puzzler worksheet that corresponds to a Powerpoint presentation I am giving in class.

    DOWNLOAD: Holmes Puzzler Worksheet (DOC)

For Class 40: British terms & Curious vocabulary quiz

Please put your PowerPoint on the X-drive before 9:30 a.m. on the day you're assigned to present.  X://Teacher Folders/Rose/A2 or A4 Powerpoints. Be sure your last name appears in the file name.

Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time
To we'll begin reading our final book of the year -- a short novel by contemporary English author Mark Haddon from 2003. In conjunction with this short novel, we'll also be reading the Sherlock Holmes story "Silver Blaze," which features some of Arthur Conan Doyle's most effective plotting, hinging on the "curious incident of the dog in the night-time."

We'll be discussing the short story and the novel over the next two classes, after our IRP presentations each day. Check out the Curious incident resources page below

     LINK: Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time (WEB)

Semester Exam
Your semester exam will focus exclusively on "Silver Blaze" and Curious Incident.

For Next Class
Read "Silver Blaze." You will have a one-question quiz on this short story!

Through innocent eyes
John Mullan analyzes The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon. Part One: The Inadequate Narrator

The (London) Guardian, April 23, 2004

There is a special type of first-person narrative that requires the reader to supply what the narrator cannot understand. Much of what "happens" in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is not grasped by Christopher, its narrator. The reader comprehends, as Christopher never will, the farcical drama of parental discord that he witnesses. Even when he discovers the truth about his mother, but living in London with a lover, he has no idea of his father's reasons for lying (his cowardice and protectiveness).

Christopher, the book jacket tells you, has Asperger's syndrome, though this is never named in the novel. He has no understanding of others' emotions, though he doggedly records their symptoms. "He looked at me for a long time and sucked air in through his nose," he observes,   when his father is, we infer, near despair. Yet requiring the reader to fill in these gaps allows for a tragicomic intuition of characters' feelings that a more adequate narrator could not manage.

The "inadequate narrator" is not an established critical term. Yet the more usual "unreliable narrator" seems inaccurate for a narrator who, however un-comprehending, is entirely trustworthy. We are not invited to be sceptical about what Christopher tells us. As he says several times, "I always tell the truth". Indeed, his very truthfulness is a kind of limitation on his understanding of the world. He cannot negotiate his way through conversations.

Narrative inadequacy is not so unusual in fiction. Think of Alice Walker's The Color Purple, whose narrator is qualified by her inarticulacy. We infer what she suffers through her inability to express it. Then there is the model for the inadequate narrator, the eponymous heroine of Samuel Richardson's Pamela (1740). A 15-year-old servant girl, she is too innocent to comprehend the schemes of her predatory master, though we as readers see them all too clearly. These narrators are innocent, like Christopher, but they are also limited by their language. One effect is a satirical indictment of those nominally sophisticated adults whom each narrator describes and tries to understand.

Christopher's peculiar ingenuousness is as much fictional device as medical condition. You do not have to check him against a psychiatric textbook to believe in him as a narrator. The reader is left to piece together the meanings and motives of the characters around him; he never explains or interprets. "When I was little I didn't understand about other people having minds... But I don't find this difficult now." He has decided to turn life into a detective story,  for "if something is a puzzle there is always a way of solving it".

The inadequate narrator lets us glimpse the inadequacies of all the adults he encounters. The reader senses the torments and forbearance of Christopher's father, uncomprehended by him. Christopher knows things about others only by their conventional signs. When his father shouts, this means anger. When there are tears "coming out of his eyes", he must be sad, though he wrongly and characteristically supposes that the cause must be the death of their
neighbour's dog, Wellington.

Christopher is also detached from his own torments. When things become too much, he curls into a ball and hides in a small space, or simply screams. When he reads the letters from his mother that his father has hidden from him, he has no description to offer of his feelings, just an account of a kind of seizure. "I couldn't think of anything at all because my brain wasn't working properly." This is no figure of speech. When the patterns of thought and habits of behaviour on which he depends collapse, there is nothing else.

The irony is that his inadequacy as a guide to human psychology is balanced by a fastidious accuracy in matters of report. "I am really good at remembering things, like the conversations I have written down in this book, and what people were wearing, and what they smelled like." His exactitude shows up the evasions of the other characters. Imagining things is what makes Christopher frightened. "And this is why everything I have written here is true."

· John Mullan is senior lecturer in English at University College London

IRP Note: All written materials for the IRP are due today. See the previous post for details. I will be accepting assignments until 3:30 this afternoon in room 331.

You are being divided up into three groups. Group A will present on May 8, Group B on May 12, and Group C on May 14. See below for group assignments.

IRP Presentation Requirements
You will be giving a 5-7 minute presentation on your IRP novel. This should be accompanied by a 5-7-slide PowerPoint. You should address the following points in your presentation and PowerPoint slides:

     One: Brief introduction and background of the author
     Two: Introduction to the novel, its characters, and major conflicts (brief synopsis)
     Three: Overview of major themes, motifs, and symbols in the novel
     Four:  Overview of your analytical essay: explain your thesis and how you supported it.

A note on length: You will be given a maximum of seven minutes for the presentation. Plan it out so that you do not go over.

Very important point: Please put your PowerPoint on the X-drive before 8:00 on the day you're assigned to present.  X://Teacher Folders/Rose/A2 or A4 Powerpoints. Be sure your last name appears in the file name.

Group A -- May 8

Group B -- May 12

Group C -- May 14

Today, we'll be reviewing some strategies for approaching the poetry essay portion of the exam. For those of you who will miss my class because of an AP Psychology exam or AP Chemistry, good luck!

AP Prep Suggestions -- REDUX:

1. Read this short essay of tips from an A.P. reader/grader:
    An A.P. Exam Reader's Advice on Writing  (DOCX)

2. Review the literary terms and language resources for poetry:
    Poetry Terms: A Quick Reference Guide (DOCX)

3. Have a look through poetry test-taking strategies and sample questions:
    A.P. Poetry multiple choice question strategies and practice questions (DOCX)

4. When you are reading all passages, keep in mind three things:
    Read carefully, annotate, and anticipate (all at once)

5. Be sure to review the sample exam I have on the website. This will be the format:
    Sample A.P. English Literature Exam (PDF)

My final tips on examining poetry -- REDUX
1. Who is the speaker and what is the occasion?
2. What is the central purpose of the poem?
3. By what means is this purpose achieved?
4. Identify "tone words" that will indicate the tone of the poem.
5. In responding to the prompt, be sure to remember all the language resources:
    -- literary devices 
            such as similes, metaphors, symbols, allusions, paradox, overstatement, irony
    -- the different types of imagery, including organic and kinesthetic
    -- diction (word choice), syntax (word order)
    -- format and organization
    -- musical devices such as meter, rhythm, rhyme, repetition, consonance, alliteration