Royal University of Dhaka

BA in English Program

The department of English is one of the prestigious departments of RUD. The department was established with a view of offering high standard instruction in English at the Undergraduate level. The syllabus of BA (Honors) creates a balance between Literature and Linguistics.

Requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Arts (BA) in English

Minimum Requirement 126 Credits

Course Content

Core Requirements                                                         66 Credits
ENG 102: Rhetoric and Prosody:

• Figurative Language: Imagery, Simile, Metaphor, Connotation, Denotation, Personification, Allusion, Symbol, Hyperbole, Irony, Paradox, Oxymoron and Apostrophe.

• Sound Patterns: Alliteration, Consonance, Assonance, Internal Rhyme, End Rhyme, Blank Verse, Free Verse, Heroic Couplet and Rhythm.
• Style and structure: Mood, Tone, Setting, Character and Theme.

ENG 105: Introduction to Prose and Drama:
Possible Texts:
Orwell: Shooting an Elephant
O’Connor: My Oedipus Complex
Sophocles: King Oedipus
Shaw: Arms and the Man

ENG 106: Introduction to Poetry
Possible Texts:
Shakespeare: Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day
Herrick: Delight in Disorder
Donne: The Sun Rising
Coleridge: Kubla Khan
Frost: Stopping by Woods on a snowy Evening
Ted Hughes: Pike
Adrien Rich: Living in Sin

ENG 107: Introduction to Linguistics:

• Definition of Language

• Origin of Language
• Primary Conceptions: Phonology and Phonetics, Morphology, Semantics, Syntax, Psycholinguistics, Sociolinguistics, Discourse Analysis and Pragmatics.

ENG 108: Concept of ELT

• The Grammar-Translation Method
• The Direct Method
• The Audio-Lingual Method
• The Natural Approach
• Alternative Approaches: Silent way, Suggestopaedia
• Communicative Language Teaching (CLT)
• Learner Centered Approach

ENG 201: English Phonetics and Phonology
The aim of this course is to prepare students to speak English with on acceptable pronunciation and intonation.                            

ENG 202: History of the English Language

• Industrial Revolution
• The English Empire
• Victorian England
• The First World War
• The Second World War

                              
ENG 203: Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Poetry             
This course includes the major poets of this period. Possible texts:
John Milton : Paradise Lost Bk. I & On His Blindness
John Dryden : Absalom and Achitophel
John Donne :  Selected poems
Alexander Pope: Rape of the Lock
Thomas Grey : Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
William Blake : Selections from Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience

ENG 204: Psycholinguistics
This course emphasizes on the psychological aspects of language learning.  

ENG 205: Sociolinguistics
The aim of this course is to familiarize students with various aspects of Sociolingustics. The course includes language varieties and standardization, regional and social dialects, geographical distribution and characteristics of pidgins and creoles, bilingualism, code switching/mixing and socio-cultural aspects of multi-lingualism.

ENG 206: Nineteenth Century Novel
Possible Texts:
Charles Dickens: Great Expectations                                       
Thomas Hardy: Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Emile Bronte: Wuthering Heights
Jane Austen: Pride and Prejudice

ENG 207: Victorian Prose and Poetry
Tennyson: Lotos Eaters, Ulysses, Tithonus, Locksley Hall
Browning: Porphyria’s Lover, Fra Lippo Lippi, My Last Duchess
Arnold: The Scholar Gipsy, Dover Beach
Christiana Rossetti: A Birthday, Bride Song

ENG 301: Elizabethan and Restoration Drama
 Students will not only read plays from the two periods but will gain a perspective on the historical, religious and political background of the ages.

ENG 302: Methodology of  Language Teaching
Differences between approaches, methods and strategies; A history of language teaching Principles that underpin a method; The difference methods; The oral approach and situational language teaching, The grammar-translation method, the direct method; the “Natural” approach, The audio-lingual method; the communicative approach’ Comparing approach; and evaluating methods.
 
ENG 303: Shakespeare
The course aims to familiarize students with Shakespeare’s craft, technique use of language and with the rudiments of Shakespearean stage structure through readings of Shakespeare play and poetry. Possible Texts:
Macbeth
Othello
Julius Caesar
Twelfth Night
The Merchant of Venice
Richard II
Some selected Sonnets

ENG 304: Romantic Poetry
Possible Texts:
Blake: Songs of Innocence and Experience (Selected)
Wordsworth: Tintern Abbey, The Solitary Reaper, Ode on Intimations and     Immortality
Coleridge: The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Dejection: An Ode
Byron:        Don Juan 1
Shelley: Ode to a Skylark, Adonais
Keats: Odes

 ENG 305: Literary Criticism and Analysis
A study of poetry, fiction, and drama, with close attention to literary terms, literary criticism, and the characteristics of each genre.
Possible Texts:
Aristotle, Poetics
Philip Sidney, “An Apology for Poetry”
Samuel Johnson, Preface to Shakespeare
Dryden, “An Essay on Dramatic Poesie
William Wordsworth, Preface to Lyrical Ballads
Matthew Arnold, “The Study of Poetry”
T. S. Eliot, “ Tradition and the Individual Talent”

ENG 306: American Literature I   
This survey course includes American writings from the early Puritans to the mid-19th century. How did American writers formulate an “American” self and nation in the 19th century?
Possible Texts:
William Bradford, selections from Plymouth Plantation (as in Norton)
Anne Bradstreet, selections (as in Norton)
H.D. Thoreau, Economy (from Walden) and Civil Disobedience
R.W. Emerson, “The American Scholar”
Walt Whitman, “When Luilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed”
Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
Emily Dickinson, selections

ENG 401: Introduction to Literary Theory 
The aim of this course is to familiarize students with different literary theories.                               

ENG 402: Creative Writing 

• Reading to Write: Reading Critical Essays
• Thinking Critically and Analytically on a Given Theme/Issues
• Setting the Tone of Formal Writing
• Diction or Word Choice in Academic Writing
• Transition and Cohesion
• Writing Literary Essays on Character, Theme, Style, Plot, Structure, Imagery, Symbolism Etc.

ENG 403: South Asian Literature
This course includes fiction written in English by South Asian writers over the past hundred years. Possible Texts:
R.K.Narayan, The Guide
Anita Desai, Clear Light of Day
Salman Rushdi, Midnight’s Children
Amitav Ghosh, Shadow Lines
Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things
                                               

ENG 404: Modern Novel 
Students will read a number of English novels of the post World War II era. Writers include D.H. Lawrence, George Orwell, Virginia Woolf, Joseph Conrad and James Joyce.  

Elective Requirements                                                         30 Credits

Students will select ten courses from one of the two following concentrations.

Concentration A: Literature

ENG 310: English Prose from Bacon to Swift
This course consists of prose writings from the Elizabethan age to the Nineteenth Century. 
                            
ENG 311: Eighteenth Century Fiction
This survey course includes English texts in the genres of poetry and prose from the medieval period to the end of the 18th century and the rise of the novel.                                          

ENG 312: Continental Literature
The course aims at familiarizing students with some major writers of Continental Literature. It includes works of Flabert, Tolstoy, Bretcht, Pirendello, Baudelaire and Rilke.                                                  

ENG 313: Old and Middle English in Translation
This course contains epics and poetical pieces written in old and Middle English available in modern English translation.                                                

ENG 314: Classics in Translation 
This course covers major European texts in a variety of genres from ancient Greece through the Anglo-Saxon period. Possible Texts:
Homer. The Lliad
Aeschylus,Augamemnon
Sophocles, Antigone
Euripides, Electra/Trojan Women
Aristophanes, Lysistrata
Plato, “The Allegory of the Cave”
Anonymous, Beowulf
                                               
ENG 315: Cultural Studies
This course will deal with writing on cultural from older times to modern cultural studies. Writers include, Mathew Arnold, Simon During, Roland Barthes, Stuart Hall Cornel West and Edward Said.

ENG 410: Postcolonial Theory and Literature
Student will interrogate the category of postcolonial theory and literature to discern the pitfalls of using such a broad terminology. They will also enquire into the different forms of literature and writing that can be encompassed within this category. Theory and Literature texts will include selection from Leela Gandhi, Edward Said, Homi Bhabna, Sara Suleri, Gayatri Spivak, Chandra Mohanty Talpade, Salman Rushdi, Chinua Achebe and R.K.Narayan.
                            
ENG 411: Literary Theory
The aim of this course is to familiarize students with different literary theories. Selected works of  Freud, Cleanth Brooks, E M Forster, M H Abrams, R Barthes, William Wordsworth, Fish, Said, Kora Kaplan and T S Eliot.                                                           

ENG 412: Modern Poetry
Students will deal with the complexities of modernism and related issues. Poets include T S Eliot, W B Yeats, Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath, Dylan Thomas and W H Auden.                                                       

ENG 413: Modern Drama
In this course student will be familiarized with modern drama.
Possible Text:
G.B Shaw, Men and Superman
J.M.Synge, Playboy of the Western World
Samuel Becket, Waiting for Godot
George Osborne, Look Back in Anger
Harold Pinter, Birthday Party

ENG 414: Contemporary Literature in English
This course includes writings in English from countries other than the UK and the US to give students an exposure to the range of writing in English.

ENG 415: Comparative Literature
This course includes non-English writers like R K Narayan, V S Naipaul, Arundhuti Roy, Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, Naquib Mahfuz and Nadine Gordimerand  .                                                

ENG 416: Chaucer to Fielding
Possible texts:
Chaucer, The General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales
Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, Bk 1, selections
Edmund Burke, Speech on the East India Bill
Henry Fielding, Tom Jones                                                       

ENG 417: American Literatures II
This survey course includes American writings from the late 19th centaury to the present. Possible texts:
Mark Twain, Adventure of Huckleberry Finn
Henry James, Daisy Miller
Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises
Arthur Miller, All My Sons
Allen Ginsberg, Selecton

ENG 418: Shakespeare and his Contemporaries
Possible Texts:
Thomas Kyd, The Spanish Tragedy
Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus
William Shakespeare, Hamlet
Ben Jonson, Volpone
                          

ENG 419: Women and Literature
This course includes writing in English from countries other than the UK and the US to give student an exposure to the range of writing in English.
Possible Text:
Chinua Achebe, The thing fall apart
Wole Soyinka, The Lion and the Jewel
Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin
Doris Lessing, The Grass is singing
V.S.Naipaul, A Wounded Civilization

Concentration B: ELT/Applied Linguistics

ENG 210: Business and Professional Communication

• Business Reports
• Business Letters
• Job Application/ CV writing
• Internal Memoranda
• Minutes
• Editing
• Press Release

                 
ENG 211: Teaching Language through Literature
The purpose of this course is to familiarize students with some technique of using literature for language skills training. The course will discuss some of the ideas both for the against  the use of literature teaching, and how literature might prove an effective tool for training English listening, speaking, reading and writing skills.

ENG 212: Second Language Acquisition (SLA)                             
Difference between acquisition and learning’ Comparing first and second language acquisition – Types of comparison and contrast, The critical period hypothesis, Neurological considerations, psychomotor, considerations, cognitive considerations affective consideration, Linguistic consideration; Strategies of second language acquisition; Acquisition  and learning factors; Theories of second language acquisition; different views; Communicative competence; Autonomy, individualization and self direction; the role of formal instruction is second language acquisition.

ENG 213: Syllabus and Material Design 
This course introduces to students to the different types of syllabus and fundamental consideration of syllabus design.                                       

ENG 214: English for the Media    

• Discourse Analysis of media
• Writing for the media
• Reading films
• Theory and Aesthetics of Audio-Visual Media

                                               
ENG 320: English for Specific Purposes   
This   course aims at introducing students to teaching English for specific purposes, so that they can develop themselves as good ESP teachers.                                  

ENG 321: Linguistic Theories  
This course discusses the historical developments of Linguistics as a discipline.

ENG 322: Translation Studies                                                
This course introduces students to the methods and mechanism of translation from vernacular to foreign language or vice versa.                                     

ENG 323: Pragmatics and Discourse Analysis
By the end of this course it is expected that students will be able to critically analyze spoken interaction and to evaluate written text with particular reference to context, cohesive ties, topic framework, illocution and inference.

ENG 324: Creative Writing
Students will be required to study selected literary pieces in order to develop an awareness of the linguistic devices an author employs and the effects they produce.
                            
ENG 420: Language Testing and Evaluation 
This course introduces students to the different types of language tests; it trains students to evaluate and design the tests.

ENG 421: Research Methodology in ELT
Student will learn how to write a research paper using the library and on-line recourses. How does one arrive at the workable thesis for a paper? How much should one try to include in a paper? What is the meant by documentation and what are the different methods? What is plagiarism and how does one avoid it? This course includes one final research paper in addition to exams.

ENG 422: Language Policy and Planning   
The purpose of this course is to introduce students to the important issues and considerations in language policy and planning.

ENG 423: Problems & Prospects of ELT in Bangladesh
This course provides an overview of the present state of ELT in Bangladesh and seeks to help students find out the means to resolve it. 

ENG 424: Techniques of Teaching English Language Skills

• Teaching the Receptive and Productive Skills; Theory and Application

• Integration of Four skills
• Teaching Grammar
• Teaching Vocabulary
• Teaching Pronunciation