121 Century Literature of the

st

Philippines and the World

Activity Sheet
Quarter 2 – MELC 1
Writing a Close Analysis and Critical
Interpretation of Literary Texts

REGION VI – WESTERN VISAYAS

21st Century Literature from the Philippines and the World (Grade 11)
Learning Activity Sheet (LAS) 2
First Edition, 2020

Published in the Philippines

By the Department of Education
Region 6 – Western Visayas

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This Learning Activity Sheet is developed by DepEd Region 6 – Western

Visayas.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this learning resource may be

reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical
without written permission from the DepEd Regional Office 6 – Western Visayas.

Development Team of English Activity Sheet

Writer: MYLYN G. PALMARES

Editors: Gracelle V. Gapit, Eric G. Buenafe, Melva G. Barranco
Illustrator:
Layout Artists: Mylyn G. Palmares
Schools Division Quality Assurance Team:
Arnaldo R. Tuga, EPS-English
Leila G. Valencia, EPS-LR
Jezereel Grace G. Tiron
Bernie P. Alcedo
Division of Iloilo City Management Team:
Ma. Luz M. De los Reyes, SDS
Ernesto F. Servillon Jr., ASDS
Arlo L. Villalva, CID Chief
Dr. Jerry M. Lego, SGOD Chief
Leila G. Valencia, EPS-LR
Arnaldo R. Tuga, EPS-English
Regional Management Team:
Ma. Gemma M. Ledesma ,CESO V
Dr. Josilyn S. Solana
Dr. Elena P. Gonzaga
Mr. Donald T. Genine
Dr. Nestor Paul M. Pingil
Introductory Message

Welcome to 21st Century Literature from the Philippines and the World for
Grade 11!

The 21st Century Literature of the Philippines and the World Activity Sheet is a
product of the collaborative efforts of the Schools Division of Iloilo City and DepEd
Regional Office VI - Western Visayas through the Curriculum and Learning
Management Division (CLMD). This is developed to guide the learning facilitators
(teachers, parents and responsible adults) in helping the learners meet the
standards set by the K to 12 Basic Education Curriculum.

The 21st Century Literature of the Philippines and the World Activity Sheet is
self-directed instructional materials aimed to guide the learners in accomplishing
activities at their own pace and time using the contextualized resources in the
community. This will also assist the learners in acquiring the lifelong learning skills,
knowledge and attitudes for productivity and employment.

For learning facilitator:

The 21st Century Literature from the Philippines and the World Learning
Activity Sheet will help you facilitate the teaching-learning activities specified in
each Most Essential Learning Competency (MELC) with minimal or no face-to-face
encounter between you and learner. This will be made available to the learners with
the references/links to ease the independent learning.

For the learner:

The 21st Century Literature from the Philippines and the World Learning
Activity Sheet is developed to help you continue learning even if you are not in
school. This learning material provides you with meaningful and engaging activities
for independent learning. Being an active learner, carefully read and understand the
instructions then perform the activities and answer the assessments. This will be
returned to your facilitator on the agreed schedule.
 Quarter 2, Week 2

Learning Activity Sheet (LAS) NO.2

Name of Learner: _____________________ Grade and Section: __________________

Date: _______________________________

21ST CENTURY LITERATURE FROM THE PHILIPPINES AND THE WORLD

ACTIVITY SHEET

Writing a Close Analysis and Critical

Interpretation of Literary Texts

I. Learning Competency

Writing a close analysis and critical interpretation of literary texts, applying a reading
approach, and doing an adaptation of these require from the learner the ability to
identify: representative texts and authors from Latin America and Africa.

II. Background Information for Learners

This learning activity sheet contains learnings and activities about

representative texts and authors from Latin America and Africa.

Latin American Literature refers to written and oral works created by

literary writers in South America, and the Caribbean. The languages which Latin
American authors usually use in writing are Spanish, Portuguese, English, or a
language native to their specific country. Latin American literature is the literature of
the Spanish- speaking countries of the Western Hemisphere. Historically, Latin
American Literature also includes the literary expression of the highly developed
American Indian civilizations which was conquered by the Spaniards. So, as the
years went, Latin American literature was able to develop a rich and complex
diversity of themes, creative idioms, and styles.

Among those included in the Latin American literature are the Dominican
Latina writer Julia Alvarez with her novel, In the Name of Salome, rising
contemporary literature star Yuri Herrera from Mexico with his groundbreaking
novel, Signs Preceding the End of the World, Pulitzer Prize-winning Junot Diaz with
one of his
 earlier short stories, “How to Date a Brown Girl (black girl,white girl, or halfie),” and
Haitian Edwidge Danticat’s short story, “Ghosts.”

Africa is called the “Dark Continent” because most people know very little
about this continent since it remained unexplored over a long period of time. Their
literature contains the body of traditional oral and written works expressed in Afro-
Asiatic, African, and European languages. Modern African literatures were born in
the educational systems imposed by colonialism, with models drawn from Europe
rather than existing African traditions.

Among the African literary texts and authors are : Poems, “My Black is
Beautiful (Woman)” and “My Black is Beautiful (Man)” by Naomi Johnson, Short
Story, “A Private Experience” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Short Story, “Inscape”
by Yaa Gyasi, Short Story, “War for God” by Zaynab Quadri and “The Sack” by
Namwali Serpell.

III. Accompanying DepEd Textbook and Educational Sites

1. Elizabeth Ann Wynne Gunner, Lecturer in African Literature, School of Oriental

and African Studies- https://www.britannica.com/art/African-literature

2. https://21stcenturylitph.wordpress.com/2018/05/25/literature-from-latin-america/

3. http://exploringafrica.matrix.msu.edu/curriculum/unit-three/module-
eleven/activity-one/

4. www.topplelearning.com

IV. Activity Proper

Exercise 1
Instructions: Read the poem below from the African Poetry. Then write a close
analysis and critical interpretation of the text. Use the following questions to guide
you in doing the task on your answer sheet.
 What is the major theme of the poem?
 How did the author present the plot of the poem? (describe the plot of the poem)
 Did the author use rhyme scheme at the end of each line of a poem?
 Did the author choose a free format in writing the poem?
 Did the author use figurative language as a literary device in the poem?
 Is the poem easy to be understood by ordinary readers like students?
 Did the author use strong emotions to control the language in the poem?
 Was the author’s nationality reflected in the genre of the poem?

Saturday
By: Charles Mungoshi (poet from Zimbabwe)

This is Saturday afternoon –

thunder in the air,
banana leaves rustling against the wall
the muted sounds of the children
playing rag ball out on the streets.

I have done my laundry,

washed up the pots, pans and plates.
My room is clean.
I have just taken a bath;
I am sitting by the window.

Far, far across the cocoa-coloured fields

across the river at the foot of those hills –
cars, like matchbox toys, hurtle
towards their weekend destinations.
I know I shall watch them
crawl back again on Sunday evening.
I know it: they can never escape
their destiny which is so deeply-etched
somewhere inside me.

This is Saturday afternoon

with nothing to do
thunder in the air,
banana leaves rustling against the wall
the muted sounds of children
playing rag ball somewhere in the streets.

I have done my laundry,

washed up the pots, pans and plates.
I have just had a bath
everything is clean, inside and outside.
 I am sitting by the window
and all the world is here.

Where could anyone, or anything

possibly wish to escape to?

Exercise 2

Instructions: Write a close analysis and critical interpretation of the selection below.
The following questions will help you compose a paragraph. Do it on your answer sheet.
 Were the literary elements like theme, characters, setting, plot, conflict, tone, and
point of view clearly depicted by the author in the story?
 Do the characters portray realistic scenes?
 Does the author use clear and simple language in his writings?
 Does the story contain violent scenes and languages?
 Does the author use sensory imagery to capture the reader’s interest and emotion?

In the Name of Salomé

by Julia Alvarez (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill)

She stands by the door, a tall, elegant woman with a soft brown color to her skin (southern
Italian? a Mediterranean Jew? a light-skinned negro woman who has been allowed to pass by virtue of
her advanced degrees?), and reviews the empty rooms that have served as home for the last eighteen
years.

Now in the full of June, the attic is hot. Years back, when she earned tenure, the dean offered
her a more modern apartment, nearer to the campus. But she refused. She has always loved attics, their
secretiveness, their niches and nooks, where those never quite at home in the house can hide. And this
one has wonderful light. Shafts of sunlight swarm with dust motes, as if the air were coming alive.

It is time for fresh blood in this old house. On the second floor, right below her, Vivian Lafleur
from the Music Department is getting on in years and going a bit deaf, too. Every year the piano gets
more fortissimo, her foot heavy on the pedal. Her older sister, Dot, has already retired from Admissions
and moved in with her "baby" sister.

She herself is worried about the emptiness that lies ahead. Childless and motherless, she is a
bead unstrung from the necklace of the generations. All she leaves behind here are a few close
colleagues, also about to retire, and her students, those young immortals with, she hopes, the Spanish
subjunctive filed away in their heads.

She must not let herself get morbid. It is 1960. In Cuba, Castro and his bearded boys are
saying alarming, wonderful things about the new patria they are creating. The Dalai Lama, who fled
Tibet last year on a yak with the Chinese at his heels, has issued a statement: One must love one's
enemies, or else all is lost. But these are positive signs, she reminds herself, positive signs. It is not a new
habit of hers: these efforts to rouse herself from a depressive turn of mind she inherited from her mother.
Now, playfully, she imagines the many lives she has lived as captioned by the title of one or another of
her mother's poems. How should this new life be titled? "Faith in the Future"? "The Arrival of Winter"? or
(why not?) "Love and Yearning"? The horn honks again. It will probably be titled "Ruins" if she doesn't get
downstairs soon! Marion is impatient to go, red-faced and swearing, jerking the steering wheel as she
turns the car around. "Lady driver," one of the men mutters under his breath.

"Everyone who is anyone is getting out." "Well then, I'll have no problem. ‘I'm Nobody—Who
are you?'" She loves to quote Miss Dickinson, whose home she once visited, whose fierce talent reminds
her of her own mother's. Emily Dickinson is to the United States of America as Salomé Ureña is to the
Dominican Republic—something like that.

"You are not nobody, Camila," her friend scolds. "Don't be modest now!" Marion loves to brag.
She is from the midwestern part of the country, and so she is easily impressed by somebodies, especially
when they come from either coast or from foreign countries. ("Camila's mother was a famous poet." "Her
father was president." "Her brother was the Norton Lecturer at Harvard.") Perhaps Marion thinks that such
reflected importance will stem the tide of prejudice that often falls on the foreign and colored in this
country. She should know better. How can Marion forget the cross burning on her front lawn that long
ago summer Camila visited the Reed family in North Dakota?

She couldn't possibly see me; the professor is thinking. I am already gone from this place before
she leaves, she makes the sign of the cross—an old habit she has not been able to shake since her
mother's death sixty-three years ago. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of my mother,
Salomé.

Her aunt Ramona, her mother's only sister, taught her to do this. Dear old Mon, round
andbrown with a knot of black hair on top of her head, a Dominican Buddha but with none of the
bodhisattva's calm. Mon was more superstitious than religious and more cranky than anything else. Back
then, it was a habit to kiss each parent's hand and ask their blessing before leaving the house. La
bendición, Mamá. La bendición, Papá. When her mother died, Mon thought up this way for her to ask for
Salomé's blessing. To summon strength from a fading memory that every year became less and less real
until all that was left of her mother was the story of her mother.

Years of teaching physical education have kept Marion fit and trim, and her hardy midwestern
genes have done the rest. She is warm-hearted and showy, kicking up a storm wherever she goes. "Are
you Spanish, too?" people often ask, and with her dark hair and bright eyes Marion could pass, though
her skin is so pale that Camila's father often worried that she might be anemic or consumptive.

They have lived through so much, some of which is best left buried in the past, especially
now that Marion is a respectable married lady. ("I don't know about the respectable," Marion laughs.) In
her politics, however, Marion is as conservative as her recently acquired husband, Lesley Richards III,
whose perennial tan gives him a shellacked look, as if he were being preserved for posterity. He is rich
and alcoholic and riddled with ailments.

"In the name of my mother, Salomé," she says to herself again. She needs all the help she
can get here at the end of her life in the United States. Somewhere past Trenton, New Jersey, to keep
her restless friend from further distractions ("Light me a cigarette, will you?" "Any more of those chips
left?" "I sure could use a soda!"), she offers: "Shall I tell you why I have decided to go back?" Marion has
been pestering Camila ever since she arrived a few days ago to help her friend pack. "But why? Why?
That's what I want to know. What do you hope to accomplish with a bunch of ill-mannered, unshaven,
unwashed guerrillas running a country?" Purposely, she believes, Marion mispronounces the word so it
sounds like gorillas. "Guerrillas," Camila corrects, rattling the r's.

She has been afraid she will sound foolish if she explains how just once before her life is
over, she would like to give herself completely to something—yes, like her mother. Friends would worry
that she had lost her wits, too much sugar in her blood, her cataracts blurring all levels of her vision. And
Marion's disapproval would be the worst of all, for she would not only disagree with Camila's choice, she
would try to save her.

Camila takes a deep breath. Perhaps the future will be over sooner than she thinks."I'm all ears,"
Marion says when they have both recovered. Camila's heart is still beating wildly—one of those bats that
sometimes gets trapped in her attic apartment so that she has to call the grounds crew to come get it out.
"I have to go back a ways," she explains. "I have to start with Salomé."

"Can I confess something?" Marion asks, not a real question, as she does not wait for Camila to
answer back. "Please don't get your feelings hurt, but I honestly don't think I would ever have heard of
your mother unless I had met you." She's not surprised. Americans don't interest themselves in the
heroes and heroines of minor countries until someone makes a movie about them.

"So, what's the story?" Marion wants to know. "As I said, I'll have to start with my mother, which
means at the birth of la patria, since they were both born about the same time." Her voice sounds
strangely her own and not her own. All those years in the classroom. Her half-brother Rodolfo calls it her
teacher's handicap, how she vanishes into whatever she's teaching. She's done it all her life. Long before
she stepped into a classroom, she indulged this habit of erasing herself, of turning herself into the third
person, a minor character, the best friend (or daughter!) of the dying first-person hero or heroine. Her
mission in life—after the curtain falls—to tell the story of the great ones who have passed on. But Marion
is not going to indulge her. Camila has not gotten past the first few years of Salomé's life and the wars of
independence when her friend interrupts. "I thought you were finally going to talk about yourself, Camila."

"I am talking about myself," she says—and waits until they have passed a large moving van,
sailing ship afloat on its aluminum sides—before she begins again.

RUBRIC FOR WRITING COMPOSITION

Performance Areas Very Good Good Needs Improvement 4-1
10-8 7-5
Content Article has specific Central idea is vague; Unable to find specific
central idea that is non-supportive to the supporting details
clearly stated in the topic; lacks focus
opening paragraph,
appropriate, concrete
details
Organization Article is logically Writing somewhat Central point and flow of
organized and well- digresses from the article is lost; lacks
structured central idea organization and continuity
Style Writing is smooth, Sentences are varied Lacks creativity and focus.
coherent and and inconsistent with Unrelated word choice to
consistent central idea central idea
understanding of
information in text
Mechanics Written work has no Written work is Written article has several
errors in word relatively free of errors errors in word selection and
selection and use in word selection and use. indiscriminately selected
sentence structure, use, sentence phrases or sentences.
spelling, punctuation, structure, spelling,
and capitalization punctuation and
capitalization (some
have errors)
Remember

Latin American Literature are written and oral works created by literary
writers in South America, and the Caribbean. Latin American literature is the literature
of the Spanish- speaking countries of the Western Hemisphere.

Africa is called the “Dark Continent” because most people know very little
about this continent since it remained unexplored over a long period of time. African
literature contains the body of traditional oral and written works expressed in Afro-
Asiatic, African, and European languages.

V. Reflection

1. What did you like most / didn’t you like about the activities?
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________

2. Which part of the activities did you find challenging?

______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________

VI. Answer Key

Activity 1 (Answers may vary)

Activity 2 (Answers may vary)