Higher Diploma in English

Assignment Cover Sheet

Qualification Module Number and Title

Higher Diploma in English EDN4016 Reading Literature

Student Name & No. Assessor
Mr.Bandula Wimalasiri

Hand out date: Submission Date:

24th April 2022 19th May 2022

Assessment type Duration/Length of Weighting of Assessment
OTHER1 (001) Assessment Type 20%
Essay – 1000 words

Learner Declaration

I, ………………………………………….<name of the student and registration number>,

certify that the work submitted for this assignment is my own and research sources are fully
acknowledged.

Marks Awarded
First assessor

IV marks

Agreed grade

Signature of the assessor Date

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 Higher Diploma in English

Assignment Feedback
First assessor feedback

Assessors name & Date

signature

Second assessor feedback

Assessors name & Date

signature

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 Higher Diploma in English

Coursework

Weighting of assessment: 20% total marks

Learning outcomes covered

1. The students will understand the genre & form of literature through close textual analysis.
2. The students will develop key close reading skills.
3. The students will gain the ability to critical ideas & arguments.
Scenario

“IN THE EARLY morning, while my father slept and the cold light filtered through the
sharp overcast of young cloud, I rose silently, washed and shaved carefully, returned to my
room, dressed slowly, then took the jar with the sleepy-looking wasp in it up to the loft, where
the Factory waited.
I left the jar on the small altar under the window and made the last few preparations the
Factory required. Once that was done I took some of the green cleaning jelly from the pot by the
altar and rubbed it well into my hands. I looked at the Time, Tide and Distance Tables, the little
red book that I kept on the other side of the altar, noting the time of high tide. I set the two small
wasp candles into the positions the tips of the hands of a clock would have occupied on the face
of the Factory if showing the time of local high tide, then I slid the top off the jar a little and
extracted the leaves and the small piece of orange peel, leaving the wasp in there alone.
I set the jar on the altar, which was decorated with various powerful things; the skull of the
snake which killed Blyth (tracked down and sliced in half by his father, using a garden spade-I
retrieved it from the grass and hid that front part of the snake in the sand before Diggs could take
it away for evidence), a fragment of the bomb which had destroyed Paul (the smallest bit I could
find; there were lots), a piece of tent fabric from the kite which had elevated Esmerelda (not a
piece of the actual kite of course, but an off-cut) and a little dish containing some of the yellow,
worn teeth of Old Saul (easily pulled).
I held my crotch, closed my eyes and repeated my secret catechisms. I could recite them
automatically, but I tried to think of what they meant as I repeated them. They contained my
confessions, my dreams and hopes, my fears and hates, and they still make me shiver whenever I
say them, automatic or not. One tape recorder in the vicinity and the horrible truth about my
three murders would be known. For that reason alone they are very dangerous. The catechisms
also tell the truth about who I am, what I want and what I feel, and it can be unsettling to hear
yourself described as you have thought of yourself in your most honest and abject moods, just as
it is humbling to hear what you have thought about in your most hopeful and unrealistic
moments.
Once I had gone through this I took the wasp without further ado to the underside of the
Factory, and let it in.

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The Wasp Factory covers an area of several square meters in an irregular and slightly
ramshackle tangle of metal, wood, glass and plastic. It is all based around the face of the old
clock which used to hang over the door of the Royal Bank of Scotland in Porteneil.
The clock face is the most important thing I have ever recovered from the town dump. I
found it there during the Year of the Skull and rolled it home down the path to the island and
rumbled it over the footbridge. I stored it in the shed until my father was away for the day, then I
strained and sweated all day to get it up into the loft. It is made of metal and is nearly a meter in
diameter; it is heavy and almost unblemished; the numerals are in roman script and it was made
along with the rest of the clock in Edinburgh in 1864, one hundred years exactly before my birth.
Certainly not a coincidence.
Of course, as the clock looked both ways, there must have been another face, the other side
of the clock; but, although I scoured the dump for weeks after I found the face I do have, I never
did discover the other one, so that it, too, is part of the mystery of the Factory-a little Grail
legend of its own. Old Cameron in the ironmonger's shop in the town told me that he heard a
scrap-metal dealer from Inverness took the workings of the clock, so perhaps the other face was
melted down years ago, or now adorns the wall of some smart house on the Black Isle built from
the profits of dead cars and the varying price of lead. I'd rather the former.
There were a few holes in the face which I soldered up, but I left the hole in the dead center
where the mechanism connected with the hands, and it is through that the wasp is let into the
Factory. Once there it can wander about the face for as long as it likes, inspecting the tiny
candles with its dead cousins buried inside if it likes, or ignoring them if it would rather.
Having made its way to the edge of the face, though, where I have sealed it with a wall of
plywood two inches high, topped with a meter-circle of glass I had the glazier in the town make
specially, the wasp can enter one of twelve corridors through little wasp-sized doors, one
opposite each of those-to the wasp- vast numerals. If the Factory so chooses, the weight of the
wasp trips a delicate see-saw trigger made from thin pieces of tin can, thread and pins, and a tiny
door closes behind the insect, confining it to the corridor it has chosen. Despite the fact that I
keep all the door mechanisms well-oiled and balanced, and repair and test them until the slightest
tremor sets them off-I have to tread very lightly when the Factory is doing its slow and deadly
work-sometimes the Factory does not want the wasp in its first choice of corridor, and lets it
crawl back out on to the face again.”

Analyze the above passage concentrating on the significance of the passage?

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 Higher Diploma in English
Required Primary Reading

 Iain Banks’ The Wasp Factory.

Required Secondary Reading

‘The Beginning’, ‘Narrative’, and ‘The End’, from Bennett, A. and Royle, N. (2004) An
Introduction to Literature, Criticism and Theory. Harlow: Pearson Education
Bennett, A, and Royle, N. (2009) An Introduction to Literature, Criticism and Theory. 3rd edition.
Harlow: Pearson.
Bennett, A. and Royle, N. (2004) An Introduction to Literature, Criticism and Theory. Harlow:
Pearson Education
Head, D. (2009). The Modernist Short Story: A Study in Theory and Practice. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.

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Evaluation Criteria

Total
Category Scoring Criteria Points Score
Language 25
Fluency of language to communicate arguments
Literacy effectively
(25 points)
 Building up sentences with grammatical precision
(free of errors)
 Use of precise words including literary jargon to
express arguments effectively
 Expression of language fluency
50
Ability to analyze literary elements
Literary
 Evaluate the ability to analyze elements of drama
Knowledge
(Literary, Technical)
(50 points)
 Develop the necessary analytical and critical
thinking skills to examine the literary text
 Ability to comprehend the liaison between social
context and themes represented through drama &
through literary analysis
25
Effective referencing skills
Referencing
 The ability to refer to literary texts to build up
(25 points)
arguments
 Use of proper referencing style
 Avoiding plagiarism
Score Total Points 100

(Total 100 marks)

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Assignment Preparation Guidelines

 Type your assignment clearly

 Headings: 14 pt, Bold, Underlined
 Sub-headings: 12 pt, Bold, Underlined
 Body: 12 pt, normal
 Align: Justify
 Line spacing: 1.5
 Margins: 1” form each side
 Numbering: at the bottom right hand corner
 Header
 Left side- subject name
 Footer
 Left side- batch number
 All the Figures, Tables, Diagrams etc. should be labelled and numbered
 Write on only one side of the paper.
 Utilize a table of contents and section headings where applicable.
 Use size A4 paper.
 Do not forget to sign the plagiarism statement on the cover sheet of your assignment.
 All sources of information must be referenced using “Harvard referencing” where a reference
listing should be included at the end of the assignment
 The ethical procedures of the course strictly maintain a data security policy on students’ work,
and you should submit a soft copy of your completed assignment along with your completed
assignment hard copy in order to avoid assignment information distribution among others.

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The completed assignment should consist of the following documents and should be in order:

1. Cover Sheet / Title page

2. Assignment Brief
3. Acknowledgement
4. Executive summary
5. Table of contents
6. Table of graphs/charts/ tables and illustrations (if it necessary)
7. Introduction
8. Task (body of the report including calculations)
9. Conclusion and Recommendation
10. Harvard References
11. Appendices

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Important Information for Students

 A softcopy of the assignment should be uploaded to ICBT SIS on or before the deadline. In
addition to this, the softcopy of the assignment should be uploaded to the TURNITIN via
Cardiff Met Moodle. The submission of softcopy (uploading) must take place on or before
05.00 pm on the submission day.

 Please log on to www.icbtsis.lk to upload your assignment. For TURNITIN submissions

please log on to www.cardiffmet.ac.uk and submit through the Moodle.

 Please note that you MUST attach the plagiarism report right after the cover page of the
assignment and if you do not attach the report, it will be considered as a NON Attempt.

 Uploaded softcopy should be named as HDENGLISH-(subject number) (followed by the Cardiff

met student ID)

E.g. for Delivering Successful Assignment

HDENGLISH-4016 -2000000

 Students are expected to keep a backup of all the assignments. ICBT and Cardiff Metropolitan
University have all the right to re call for soft copy of any assignment at any time during the
course.

 Please note that plagiarism is treated as a serious offence and therefore the work you
produce must be individual and original although may work in groups in some instances.

 All sources of information must be referenced using “Harvard referencing” where

a reference listing should be included at the end of the assignment.

 Please note that the submission date given for this assignment is the final date that you can
upload the assignment. No late submissions are allowed by the system.

 Please include the assignment coversheet in your answer. Please avoid copying assignment
question in your answer file.

End of the Assignments

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