BA (Honours) Programme » BA (Honours) Part I

FIRST YEAR | 750 Marks (2011 – 2-15)

Course Code Course Title Credit Marks
E 101 Listening and Speaking Skills 4 100
E 102 Critical Reading and Academic Writing 4 100
E 103 Introduction to Poetry 4 100
E 104 Introduction to Drama and Theatre 4 100
E 105 Introduction to Prose 4 100
E 106 Socio-Political History of Europe 2   50
E 107 Bangladesh Studies 2   50
E 108 Bangla Literature 4 100
Viva-Voce  2  50
 30 750

E 101  Listening and Speaking Skills

 4 Credits | 100 Marks (35 Final Examination+35 Practical+20 Tutorial+10 Attendance)

This course is intended to help students strengthen three communication skills: verbal communication, nonverbal communication, and listening with a view to enabling students to attend classes and seminars efficiently, speak clearly and convincingly at workplace and make formal presentation and public speech.

COMMUNICATION BASICS

LISTENING

  • Listening basics: definition of listening; listening process; types of listening; barriers to effective listening; strategies for effective listening
  • Listening in practice: recognizing sounds and words; catching information; finding central information; listening at conferences and seminars; understanding lyrics
  • Note-taking: style and strategy

SPEAKING

ASPECTS OF SPOKEN LANGUAGE

  • English sound systems
  • Language variation: accent; dialect; slang

VERBAL COMMUNICATION

  • Social English
  • Business English
  • Projection and Articulation: speaking fluently at an appropriate pace; speaking clearly at an appropriate volume
  • Pronunciation: IPA transcription; stress; intonation
  • Performance: monologues and dialogues from plays, etc.

NON-VERBAL COMMUNICATION

  • Elements of Nonverbal Communication: body language; eye contact and facial expression; vocal cues; use of time and space
  • Joint Functions of Nonverbal and Verbal Messages

 

PUBLIC SPEAKING

  • Presentation: planning, preparing, and giving a presentation
    • Making Announcement
    • Analyzing famous speeches

Recommended Reading

  • Bonet, Diana. The Business of Listening: A Practical Guide to Effective Listening. Third Edition. Crisp Learning, 2001.
  • Buys, William E, Thomas Sill and Roy Beck. Speaking By Doing: A Speaking-Listening Text. Illinois: NTC, 1995.
  • Galvin, Kathleen M and Jane Terrell. Communication Works: Communication Applications in the Workplace. Illinois: NTC, 2001.
  • Richards, Jack C., David Bycina, and Sue Brioux Aldcorn. Person to Person. Oxford: OUP, 2007.

E 102  Critical Reading and Academic Writing

4 Credits | 100 Marks (70 Final Examination+20 Tutorial+10 Attendance)

This course is designed to strengthen students’ skills in reading and writing. The course is divided into two parts. First, it helps students to learn how to read effectively as well as critically. Second, it enables students to write focused, coherent, organized, and grammatically correct essays as well as critical essays that they are required to write in the exams.

CRITICAL READING

  • Skimming and Scanning
  • Extracting main ideas
  • Understanding text organization
  • Predicting and Inferencing
  • Understanding form, voice, tone, and style
  • Dealing with unfamiliar words and language variation
  • Reading blurbs, media texts, etc.
  • Understanding rhetorical and poetic uses of language
  • Writing summaries

ACADEMIC WRITING

WRITING COMPOSITION

  • Paragraph: topic sentence, supporting details, coherence and continuity, terminator
  • Essay: title, introduction (Thesis statement), body, conclusion
  • Patterns of writing: narration, description, illustration, definition, comparison and contrast, division and classification, causal analysis, process, argument, persuasion, etc.

CRITICAL APPRECIATION

  • Understanding explication, analysis, interpretation, and evaluation
  • Writing about literature: theme; structure (Plot, Point of view etc.); style; imagery; prosody; .figurative languages (apostrophe, allusion, image, irony, oxymoron and paradox, personification, simile and metaphors, symbol, etc.)

EDITING AND PROOFREADING

  • Sentence structure: tense; voice; conditionals; prepositions; fragments, run-ons, misplaced modifier, dangling modifier, etc.
  • Mechanics: capitalization; number style; punctuation, etc.

REFERENCE SKILLS

  • Taking notes
  • Avoiding plagiarism: quoting, summarizing, paraphrasing
  • Citation: in-text citation; bibliography


E 103  Introduction to Poetry

4 Credits | 100 Marks (70 Final Examination+20 Tutorial+10 Attendance)

The objective of this course is to introduce students to the study of poetry in English. It intends to familiarize students to the formal elements of poetry and music. It also helps students to study select poems of different genres and forms, ranging from the sonnet and elegy to concrete poetry and Spiritual. The students are expected to learn the ways a poem is formed and to write effective papers to analyze style, structure, theme, and other features of a poem.

POETICS

  • Genres: Ballad; Concrete Poetry; Dramatic Monologue; Elegy; Lyric; Narrative; Nonsense; Ode; Prose Poetry; Ruba’i; Sonnet; Spiritual, etc.
  • Elements of Poetry:

a)      Lexical-thematic dimension: diction, rhetorical figures, theme, etc.

b)      Visual dimension: stanzas, concrete poetry, etc.

c)      Rhythmic-Acoustic dimension: rhyme, rhythm, alliteration, onomatopoeia, etc.

  • Elements of Music: pitch, scale, time (metre, rhythm), harmony (polyphony, counterpoint), etc.

POETRY                            

ORAL TRADITION

  • Anonymous                                         “The Wife of Usher’s Well”
  • Anonymous                                         “Steal Away to Jesus”
  • Anonymous                                         “Didn’t My Lord Deliver, Daniel”

WRITTEN TRADITION

  • William Shakespeare                           Sonnet 18
  • Philip Sidney                                       Astrophel and Stella (selection)
  • George Herbert                                    “Easter Wings”
  • Thomas Gray                                       “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”
  • William Wordsworth                            “I wandered lonely as a cloud”
  • Percy Bysshe Shelley                           “Ode to a Skylark”
  • John Keats                                           “La Belle Dame Sans Merci”
  • Elizabeth Barrett Browning                  “How do I love thee?”
  • Edward Fitzgerald (Trans.)                   The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám (1-17)
  • Alfred, Lord Tennyson                                          “Ulysses”
  • Rabindranath Tagore                           Gitanjali (“Little Flute,” “Purity,” “Journey Home”)
  • A K Ramanujan                                   “A River”
  • Adrienne Rich                                     “Aunt Jennifer’s Tiger”
  • Seamus Heaney                                   “Digging”

E 104  Introduction to Drama and Theatre

4 Credits | 100 Marks (70 Final Examination+20 Tutorial+10 Attendance)

The objective of this course is to introduce students to the study of drama in English. The course is divided into two parts. First, it familiarizes students to the theory and craft of drama and theatre. Second, it helps students read plays produced in different languages, times and places. The students are expected to learn the ways a drama is composed and staged to write effective papers to analyze style, structure, theme, and other features of a play.

DRAMATICS AND THEATRE

Aristotle                             Poetics

  • Genres: tragedy, comedy, tragicomedy; romance
  • Elements of Drama: construction, language, action
  • Elements of Theatre: atmosphere, stage, acting, direction, artistic direction, art direction
  • Elements of Performance: persona; movement; projection; improvisation

DRAMA

  • Sophocles                          King Oedipus
  • William Shakespeare         The Merchant of Venice
  • Oscar Wilde                       The Importance of Being Earnest
  • Mahesh Dattani                  Final Solutions

E 105  Introduction to Prose

4 Credits | 100 Marks (70 Final Examination+20 Tutorial+10 Attendance)

The objective of this course is to introduce students to the study of prose in English. It includes both the study of the art of appreciating prose narratives and critical reading of select novel, short stories, essays, letter, and speech. The students are expected to learn the ways a prose narrative is formed and to write effective papers to analyze style, structure, theme, and other features of a prose piece.

ART OF FICTION

  • E M Forster                              “Plot” (from Aspects of a Novel)
  • Virginia Woolf                         “Modern Fiction”
  • Genres: novel, short story, fable, tale, parable, essay, speech
  • Elements of Fiction: theme, structure, plot, characterization, narrative technique, point of view, symbolism, style, etc.
    • Elements of Essay: theme, structure, style, tone, etc.

NOVEL

  • Jane Austen                             Pride and Prejudice

SHORT STORY

  • Edgar Allan Poe                       “The Black Cat”
  • James Joyce                             “Araby”
  • Katherine Mansfield                “The Garden-Party”

NON-FICTION PROSE

  • Jonathan Swift                         “A Modest Proposal”
  • Charles Lamb                          “Bachelor’s Complaint of the Behaviour of the Married People”
  • Rabindranath Tagore               “Letter to the Viceroy repudiating knighthood”
  • George Orwell                         “Politics and the English Language”
  • Martin Luther King Jr.             “I Have a Dream”

E 106  Socio-Political History of England

2 Credits | 50 Marks (35 Final Examination+10 Tutorial+05 Attendance)

This course, in a broad historical scope, studies the social and political history of England. It intends to understand if and how the culture, society, and history of England are shaped by different European and national movements and events and how these movements also shaped the development of English literary periods. The course has a particular focus on the process and politics of the formation of the ‘United Kingdom.’

  • The Renaissance
  • Reformation and Counter-Reformation Movements
  • Civil War in England and the Commonwealth
  • The ‘Glorious’ Revolution
  • Formation of the ‘United Kingdom’
  • French Revolution and England: The Enlightenment; British Romanticism
  • Victorian England: Industrial Revolution
  • World War I (1914-1918)
  • Bolshevik Revolution and England
  • World War II (1939-1945)

E 107  Bangladesh Studies

2 Credits | 50 Marks (35 Final Examination+10 Tutorial+05 Attendance)

This course intends to study the emergence of Bangladesh as a nation-state in a broad socio-historical scenario. The course is divided into two parts. The first part concentrates on the cultural, political and economic factors that shaped the history of the Bengal and Bangladesh while the second part focuses on the artistic tradition and achievement of the people of Bangladesh.

LAND, PEOPLE, AND THE EMERGENCE OF BANGLADESH

  • Ethnic origin
  • Socio-political history of Bengal: Early Hindu and Buddhist periods; Sultani Bengal; Mughal Empire; the British Raj; Swadeshi movement, etc.
  • Political and economic factors and major events leading to the independence ofBangladesh
    • Culture: ritual, language, religion, cultural values, etc.
    • Nationality and ‘indigenous’ population
    • Language varieties

ART AND ARCHITECTURE

  • Art: music, drama, painting, pottery, etc.
  • Architecture: ancient, colonial, modern, postmodern, etc.

Recommended Reading

  • আব্দুল্লাহ ফারুক, বাংলাদেশের অর্থনৈতিক ইতিহাস ।
  • আব্দুল হামিদ, পল্লী উন্নয়ন বাংলাদেশ ।
  • কামাল সিদ্দিকী , বাংলাদেশে ভূমি সংস্কারের রাজনীতি ।
  • Gough, Kathleen and Hari P. Sharma (Eds.). Imperialism and Revolution in South Asia. New York: Monthly Review Press: 1977.
  • Islam, Sirajul. (Ed.) Banglapedia. English Version. Dhaka: Asiatic Society of Bangladesh,
  • —. History of Bangladesh 1704-1971. 3rd ed. (3 vols.). Dhaka: Asiatic society of Bangladesh.
  • Khan, Azizur Rahman and Mahabub Hossain. The Strategy of Development in Bangladesh. London: Macmillan, 1989.
  • Khan, Mohammad Mohabbat and John P Thorp. Bangladesh: Society, Politics and Bureaucracy. Centre for Administrative Studies: 1984.
  • Rashid, Haroon Ar. Geography of Bangladesh. Dhaka: UPL, 1977.  

E 108  Bangla Literature

4 Credits | 100 Marks (70 Final Examination+20 Tutorial+10 Attendance)

This course samples the rich tradition of Bangla literature. It includes both the formal study of literary devices and critical reading of select poems, plays, novels, and short stories. The objective is to underscore the uniqueness and immense varieties of Bangla literature as well as to explore if and how Bangla literature has been influenced by the western and English literature and philosophy.

  • ছন্দ ও অলঙ্কার সমীক্ষা
  • ছন্দ: অক্ষরবৃত্ত, মাত্রাবৃত্ত, স্বরবৃত্ত, গদ্যছন্দ, মিশ্রছন্দ
  • শব্দালঙ্কার: অনুপ্রাস, যমক,শ্লেষ, বক্রোক্তি, ধ্বন্যুক্তি
  • অর্থালঙ্কার: উপমা, রূপক, উৎপ্রেক্ষা, সমাসোক্তি, অতিশয়োক্তি

কবিতা

  • মাইকেল মধুসূদন দত্ত                                                ‘কপোতাক্ষ নদ’, ’বঙ্গভাষা’
  • রবীন্দ্রনাথ ঠাকুর                                                    ’সোনার তরী’, ‘বাঁশি’
  • লালন সাঁই                                                            ‘ক্ষেপা তুই না জেনে তোর আপন খবর’, ‘আমি একদিনও না দেখিলাম তারে’
  • কাজী নজরুল ইসলাম                                               ‘বিদ্রোহী’, ‘মোহররম’
  • জীবনানন্দ দাশ                                                      ‘বনলতা সেন’, ‘তোমার যেখানে সাধ’, ‘নিরালোক’
  • শামসুর রাহমান                                                     ‘উদ্ভট উটের পিঠে চলেছে স্বদেশ’, ‘গেরিলা’, ‘বর্ণমালা, আমার দুঃখিনী বর্ণমালা’
  • আল মাহমুদ                                                          সোনালী কাবিন ১, ২

নাটক

  • সেলিম আল দীন                                                     কিত্তনখোলা 

গল্প

  • রবীন্দ্রনাথ ঠাকুর                                                    ‘অতিথি’
  • শরৎচন্দ্র চট্টোপাধ্যায়                                                ‘মহেশ’
  • মহাশ্বেতা দেবী                                                       ‘স্তন্যদায়িনী’
  • আখতারুজ্জামান ইলিয়াস                                           ‘দুধভাতে উৎপাত’

উপন্যাস

  • সৈয়দ ওয়ালিউল্লাহ                                                  লাল সালু