Lit: What you need to know
Beryl Clarke, Contributor

This academic year, as in previous years, you (students) will move upward from one grade to another on the educational ladder. Those of you who area just starting the English B syllabus have a rich feast of reading ahead of you, as do those who are continuing. This should whet your appetite so that reading becomes part of your diet for the rest of your lives.

Commendation is due to those persons who selected the texts and poems on the English B syllabus for the variety and quality on offer. You will have great fun with all of them, particularly if you develop and maintain a positive attitude, realise that you need an education and work hard for your success.

Welcome! Welcome! Welcome to the Caribbean Examinations Council study guide for 2009-2010. I know that regardless of your circumstances you must have been extremely happy during the recently held World Games. What a wonderful example was set again by our athletes! As you return to school this exam or pre-exam year, you must be motivated for we have all seen a clear demonstration of what hard work can do. It is the reason that has caused our athletes in Berlin to shine, to compete with the best and come out on top. They have reaped their just rewards and, hopefully, will continue to do so. Please take a page out of their books and put in the necessary effort now so that in time you, too, will be rewarded. Very hearty congratulations to our athletes!

Now, let me acknowledge all those students who were successful in their external examinations. I am proud of you all! You have made use of the opportunities you were given and have emerged victoriously. Make sure that you are not now sidetracked but remain focused as you work towards your dream. Let me urge those who did not achieve your goals this time to pick yourself up and go again. I want you to know that failure is not final if you are resolved to press on. Please do not spend time beating up on yourselves. Try to remember what you did to prepare for the exams and what you did in them, then try to identify any mistake(s) you made. Plan now how to correct your approach and your method and begin to prepare for this year. I hope that these and other lessons in the Youthlink will greatly benefit you and indeed all those who use them. I feel sure that we will have a good year together.

Let me point out that literatures in English is a subject that you cannot help being the better for studying. I believe that some of you are doing it because you need another subject to fulfil your school's requirement or because you love to read or you have been advised that it is a good base for a particular career, or because you are developing a grasp and understanding, maybe love of the subject. Whatever your reason, rest assured that the following should happen:

• Your vocabulary will increase
• Your standard of both oral and written expression will get better as you see how writers use language to create atmosphere and emotions.
• You will get to know more of the history and culture of the world - particularly of those places in which the works you are studying are set.
• Your imagination will be stimulated - consequently, you should be able to write excellent short stories.
• You will develop or improve on your analytic skills as you learn to think, reason and draw conclusions.
• Your knowledge of human nature as found in different races, religions, the genders, emotions and how they influence human actions ought to get better too.
• You will dance, laugh out loud and sing as you sharpen your dramatic skills.
• You will get into the habit of thinking about similarities and differences among works, making comparisons between poems and prose works.
• You will have fun, in other words you will find yourself laughing as you read Fences or 'The Carpenter's Complaint', among others.

Literature is the study of how people live - how they talk, what they wear, eat and drink; their hopes, dreams, fears and concerns. It involves their beliefs about religion, their relationships and cultural practices.

And now to our syllabus on which I know you would already have completed a year's work. The texts are listed as follows:

Drama

The Merchant of Venice - William Shakespeare

Fences - August Wilson

Prose

West Indian

Either Beka Lamb - Zee Edgell

Or

The Humming Bird Tree - Ian McDonald

Other literature in English

The Chrysalids - John Wyndham

Or

A Kestrel for a Knave - Barry Hinds

Poetry

Selections from World of Prose - Hazel Simmons and Mark McWatt.

The prescribed poems are:

• 'A Contemplation Upon Flowers' - Henry King
• 'Travelling Through the Dark' - William Stafford
• 'Colonial Girls School' - Olive Senior
• 'Ana' - Mark McWatt
• 'My Papa's Waltz' - Theodore Roethke
• 'An Athlete Dying Young' - Mervyn Morris
• 'From the Emigrants' - Kamau Brathwaite
• 'Geography Lesson' - Zulfiquar Ghose
• 'Coolie Mother' - David Dabydeen
• 'The Carpenter's Complaint' - Edward Baugh
• 'Richard Cory' - Edwin Arlington Robinson
• 'God's Work' - Ian McDonald
• 'Epitaph' - Dennis Scott
• 'God's Grandeur' - Manley Hopkins
• 'For My Mother' - Lorna Goodison
• 'Dreaming Black Boy' -James Berry
• 'The Lynching' - Claude McKay
• 'This is the Dark Time, My Love' - Martin Carter
• 'Sonnets from China XV' - W.H. Auden
• 'Le Loupgarou' - Derek Walcott.

I am now going to use this opportunity to tell you that you are to study all 20 poems given above. You see, you do not know which poems will be on your examination paper so you have to be ready for all. Furthermore, it will take TWO poems to answer EACH poetry question.

I have no doubt that you are anxious to hear more about your syllabus. For this reason, we will spend some more time on it in our next lesson. Until then, begin to work hard as you get with the programme of success. God bless!

A section of the students at the official opening ceremony of careers week at Godfrey Stewart High School on April 30. - Photo by Dalton Laing