Quotes

Language? What is it? 

"Political language... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind." -- George Orwell

"By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth." -- George Carlin

"The limits of my language means the limits of my world." -- Ludwig Wittgenstein

"Language is the friendliest of the things from which we cannot escape." -- Mason Cooley

"Of all our inventions for mass communication, pictures still speak the most universally understood language." -- Walt Disney

Literature? What is it? 

"What is wonderful about great literature is that it transforms the man who reads it towards the condition of the man who wrote." -- E. M. Forster

"Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity." -- G. K. Chesterton

"Literature is the most agreeable way of ignoring life." -- Fernando Pessoa

"Literature adds reality, it does not simply describe it. It enriches the necessary competencies that daily life requires and provides; and in this respect, it irrigates the deserts that our lives have already become." -- C.S Lewis

"The difficulty of literature is not to write, but to write what you mean; not to affect your reader, but to affect him precisely as you wish." -- Robert Louis Stevenson

What is Lang and Lit?

Language and Literature is a somewhat new course that was added to the IB curriculum at the American School of Lima: Franklin Delano Roosevelt. This course strives to combine two core subjects that were taught previous years in a separate manner. These courses were: Language and Literature. 

Language Portion of the Course (Analyzing what is being said)

The combination of these two areas has enabled students to learn how to analyze a variety of texts in an objective manner, discovering the bias that media hides in what they expose to the world. By being able to analyze articles, images, advertisements, songs, etc., students will have a broader image of the impact that mass media communication techniques, (i.e. radios, TV, music, books, magazines, etc.) have on the world, increasing their knowledge and awareness of society. In addition, students will always perfection their orator skills through practices like the FOA (Further Oral Activity) in which they will be instructed to present an article in 10 minutes and express the way the bias is conveyed through a series of techniques. 

Finally in the Lit portion of the course, students will have the capacity to analyze short stories and literary works, interpreting the meaning of what they read and putting it in their own words. This will help them increment their vocabulary and thus the register in which they speak (colloquial vs. standard). 

Literature Portion of the Course (Analyzing books)