What's required reading in English schools?

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Originally Posted by Nightshade

The Koran?! What all of it.... how do you study an interpritation Koran as a text I Imagine alot of the languge contextal points ae lost pluss alot ties in with Islamic history and people....although I suppose one with a tafseer.

Who's interpritation/translation?

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Oh no! :eek: I guess I should have put that up there. No, I read selections from the Koran. We were studying that time frame (i.e. The Rise of Islam). I use a college history textbook (Western Civilization by Jackson J. Spielvogel), along with other sources for studying, then we read first sources (the Koran). I like to consider it more of an introduction, something I'd like to study more in depth at a later time. Almost all on the list I read in full, though a select few like the Koran, I don't read all of, since one school year really does not give enough time for.
Frankly with so many books we have to buy each year, we search for the best edition for what we're looking for but, if our library has an edition we'll just use that. Otherwise it can become very expensive. For the Koran we used: 1st Touchstone ed. Simon & Schuster, which was at our library.
I hope that answers your question!;)

For GCSE :
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
A View From The Bridge by Arthur Miller
Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
A collection of modern poetry
Some Australian short stories.

For AS Level, I did :
Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier
Thomas Hardy poetry.
The Merchant of Venice by Shakespeare (for coursework)
All My Sons by Arthur Miller

You guys are reminding me of some of the required reading I had when I went to high school back in the mid-80's (in California):

The Great Gatsby
Canterbury Tales
Fahrenheit 451
Grapes of Wrath
Catcher in the Rye
Lord of the Flies
Macbeth
Oedipus Rex
The Crucible
Of Mice and Men
Beowulf
Never Cry Wolf
Julius Casesar
To Kill a Mockingbird
The Crucible
Animal Farm
Scarlet Letter
1984 (read that in the year 1984, naturally)
The Death of Ivan Illych
Pgymalian
One Day in the life of Ivan Denisovich

I hated John Steinbeck back then (cursed him through every chapter I was "forced" to read). Now he's one of my most beloved authors.

Edit: Oops, didn't realize how old this thread is...sorry for the bump. What do you want...I'm just a goofy newbie. Gahhh...

From what I remember as the blur that is high school, here's how things went.

Freshman year:
To Kill a Mockingbird (I was surprised. I had read this when I was much littler)
Romeo and Juliet
and some stuff I forgot

Sophomore:
We mainly read excerpts from translated world literature like The Tale of Genji, the Odyssey, the Illiad, the Epic of Gilgamesh, etc.

Junior:
The Scarlett Letter
The Great Gatsby
What is the What (Eggers)
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
lots of Annie Dillard, Carl Sagan and associated authors who write about literary theory [except my favorite, of course, Michel Foucault]
The Crucible
and some other stuff

Senior:
Hamlet
Macbeth
1984
Their Eyes Were Watching God
How to Read Literature like a Professor
A Room with a View

My year pursuing my French baccalaureat consisted of Candide, A Sentimental Education, something by Marimee, Flowers of Evil, Confessions of a Child of the Century, Madame Bovary, The Plague, The Stranger, Nausea, something by Cesair and something else by Zola. There was more but I guess I forgot.

This year:

Gulliver's Travels, Jonathan Swift
Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway
Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky
Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte
The Awakening, Kate Chopin

Medea, Euripides
Beowulf, ?
Othello and Macbeth, Shakespeare
Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
Hard Times, Charles Dickens
The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde
Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
Waiting for Godot, Samuel Beckett

Hmm this year I read...

Beowulf
Excerpts from Canterbury Tales
Epic of Gilgamesh
Excerpts from La Morte D'Arthur
Renaissance poetry like John Donne, Raleigh, Marlowe, Suckling, etc.
Restoration such as Johnathan Swift, Pope etc.
Romantic poetry
Victorian poetry

Novels/Plays of...
Fahrenheit 451 (I would have preferred 1984 but oh well, I read it myself)
Macbeth
Hamlet
Frankenstein
Slaughterhouse Five

Hmm, right now we are reading poetry from the 20th Century and are about to read I think some excerpts from The Stranger by Camus.

I wouldn't mind being english just to read and study all that stuff. You have to read some of my favorite novels, which I had to discover on my own.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Twain)
Waiting for Godot (Beckett)
Invisible Man (Ellison)
Crime and Punishment (Dostoyevsky)
Oedipus Rex (Sophocles)
To A God Unknown (Steinbeck)
The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)
A Streetcar Named Desire (Williams)
A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens)
The Scarlet Letter (Hawthorne)
The Crucible (Miller)

That was the focus of our study in the past year. These were only the full length novels we read, however. In addition to that, we had to read a plethora of excerpts, essays, and poetry from writers like John Milton, Thomas Paine, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Walt Whitman.

Aside from that, I read on my own:

The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Mourning Becomes Electra
Native Son
Moby Dick
Of Mice and Men

Not sure that I can remember them all, but this was high school...

Red Badge of Courage Stephen Crane
Twelfth Night William Shakespeare
A Midsummer Night's Dream William Shakespeare
Macbeth William Shakespeare
King Lear William Shakespeare
Hamlet William Shakespeare
A Streetcar Named Desire Tennessee Williams
The Plays of Oedipus Sophocles
A Doll's House Henrik Ibsen
The Crucible Arthur Miller
A Raisin in the Sun Lorraine Hansberry
Jane Eyre Charlotte Brontë
Great Expectations Charles Dickens
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain
Gulliver's Travels Jonathan Swift
The Scarlet Letter Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Awakening Kate Chopin
Things Fall Apart Chinua Achebe
Wide Sargasso Sea Jean Rhys
The Color Purple Alice Walker
Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man James Joyce
Song of Solomon Toni Morrison
To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee
The Catcher in the Rye J.D. Salinger
The Perks of Being a Wallflower Stephen Chbosky
Lord of the Flies William Golding
A Separate Peace John Knowles
Animal Farm George Orwell
Brave New World Aldous Huxley
1984 George Orwell
The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald
Rocket Boys Homer H. Hickam, Jr.
Sister of My Heart Chitra Banjeree Divakaruni
Their Eyes Were Watching God Zora Neale Hurston
Passage to India E.M. Forster
Bread Givers Anzia Yezierska
As I Lay Dying William Faulkner
Of Mice and Men John Steinbeck
Ethan Frome Edith Wharton
Bless Me, Ultima Rudolfo Anaya
The Once and Future King T.H. White
The Odyssey Homer
Triangle David Von Drehle

As I mentioned, I could not remember all of them. But, on top of these, we also read a lot of poetry.

Well, these are the novels I've had to read so far in my high school career, as far as I can remember:

Beowulf
The Joy Luck Club (Tan)
The Odyssey (Fagles translation)
Of Mice and Men (Steinbeck)
The Canterbury Tales (Chaucer)
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
The Odor of Chrysanthemums (Lawrence)
Heart of Darkness (Conrad)
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Twain)
The Merchant of Venice, Hamlet, and Henry IV (Shakespeare)

...and that's all I can remember. Hope that helps!

Romeo and Juliet
To Kill a Mockingbird
As You Like It
Lord of the Flies
Animal Farm
Obasan - Joy Kogawa
Macbeth
The Handmaid's Tale
Snow Falling on Cedars
The Great Gatsby
Hamlet
Heart of Darkness
The Glass Menagerie

I've just finished my English Literature A level and over the two year course, these are what my class read:

Hamlet
The Tempest
Translations
The Bell
Our Country's Good
The Merchant's Tale
Hard Times
Poetry Anthology

For GCSE all I can remember studying is Macbeth. Everything else is lost from my memory. :blush:

I can tell you what I had to read in five years at school (if I'd stayed for sixth year I would have read more, obv):

To kill a Mockingbird
The Cone Gatherers (excellent book by Robin Jenkins)
Othello
Macbeth
Of Mice and Men
I read the curious incident of the dog in the nightime for my 'personal response' (an essay)
I can't remember anymore, but there were a few.

I really can't remember all the poets but some were:

Phillip Larkin
Seamus Heaney
.. that's all I can remember, haha.

Only a couple of years ago as well.

Just graduated high school and it seems alot of schools have added In Cold Blood into the curriculum. Already in it were:
The Catcher in The Rye
The Great Gatsby
Shakespeare

Great Expectations
Animal Farm
The Scarlet Letter
The Crucible
The Old man and the Sea
The Great Gatsby
Staying fat for Sarah Byrnes
Beowulf
Of Mice and Men
To Kill a Mockingbird

As a Junior in High School, let me rattle off some of the books/plays we've had to read.

Heart of Darkness
Othello
Bless Me, Ultima
Romeo and Juliet
A Midsummer Night's Dream
Antigone
Oedipus Rex
The Pearl
Of Mice and Men
Lord of the Flies
The Crucible
The Scarlet Letter
Slaughterhouse 5
Ethan Frome
Freakonomics
1984
Brave New World
The Old Man and the Sea
Animal Farm
Mere Christianity

I've had to read:

Julius Caesar
Romeo and Juliet
Hamlet
1984
Flowers for Algernon
Finding Fish

and each year I've also had to read a novel of my own choosing, which were Slaughterhouse-5, The Sound and the Fury and Lolita. As you can see, most of my teacher's choices were sound except for Finding Fish.

I remember reading "To Kill a Mockingbird", "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn", "Romeo and Juliet" and "The Metamorphosis" in middle school.

....the reading list (that I remember) from the 4 years I was in high school:

Night
Oedipus Rex
Macbeth
Beowulf
Uncle Tom's Cabin
Fallen Angels
Lord of the Flies
The Scarlet Letter
Animal Farm
The Crucible

I remember my older brother had to read "A Tale of Two Cities", "Of Mice and Men", "All Quiet on the Western Front" and "The Catcher in the Rye" among others.

Atlantic Canada

To Kill a mockingbird
the giver
the oddessey
lord of the flies
knight
romeo and juliet
stone angel
lotr the fellowship
the pearl
huck finn
the catcher in the rye

I find myself strangely interested on the choices of Literature throughout school.

From Year 10/11 age 15/16 (GCSE Level):

J.B Priestly - An Inspector Calls
William Golding - Lord Of The Flies

(I honestly CANNOT for the life of me remember what else we did...)

From A Level (Age 17/18):

Year 12:

Austen - Pride
Chaucer - Canterbury Tales
Caryl Churchill - Top Girls
Shakespeare - Richard III
Hardy - Tess
John Fowles - French Lieutenants Woman
Shakespeare - Measure For Measure
Tennyson - Selected Poetry

I'm now doing english literature and history and degree level, just finished all the texts for first year:

Shakespeare - Titus Andronicus
Aphra Behn - Oroonoko
Milton - Paradise Lost
Defoe - Moll Flanders
James Hogg - Private Memoirs and Confessions...
Coleridge - Selected Poetry
Austen - Sense and Sensibility
Bronte - Jane Eyre
Bram Stoker - Dracula
Charlotte Perkins Gilman - The Yellow Wallpaper
Conrad - Heart Of Darkness
Kipling - Kim
Woolf - A Room Of One's Own
Jean Rhys - Wide Sargasso Sea
Chinua Achebe - Things Fall Apart
Angela Carter - The Bloody Chamber
Alan Warner - Movern Callar
Annie Proulx - Close Range and Others

I have my reading list for my second year modules but I can't be bothered typing it out!

I was thinking that was a little short on the primary texts for first year degree, but then I saw that you were doing history too so it seems about right. Either way it goes to show just how limited GCSE study really is in terms of breath of material. I know that it is only situated in the 14-16 age range, and everything that comes with that, exams/coursework etc, but in terms of the vast majority of people who don't study literature beyond this level for me only shows its real inadequacy in giving people a wider scope of what is out there. Not good enough for me at all. Yes there would have been extracts of things further down the line, perhaps a whole Shakespeare play (usually Romeo and Juliet) but in terms of providing the vast amount of people in society with anything like a timeline of literature the two year GCSE certificate is far from anything like acceptable for me.

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Originally Posted by softball336

This year I've read:
Invisible Man (no not the "the invisible man"- I was disappointed)
A Prayer for Owen Meany
Lord of the Flies
1984
Heart of Darkness
and we plan to read:
Animal Farm and Hamlet

I wanted to read "Flowers for Algernon" (not sure if i've spelled that right) but my teacher wouldn't let us.

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You should pick up "Flowers for Algernon" for yourself. It was a wonderfully book. I never cared for being told what books to read. I started reading every minute I could get my hands on a book around the age of 9. I loved "Flowers for Algernon" so much, I have the book to this day. I couldn't let it go. I can't wait until my children are old enough to read it for themselves. It's a book to treasure.

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Originally Posted by IceM

As a Junior in High School, let me rattle off some of the books/plays we've had to read.

Heart of Darkness
Othello
Bless Me, Ultima
Romeo and Juliet
A Midsummer Night's Dream
Antigone
Oedipus Rex
The Pearl
Of Mice and Men
Lord of the Flies
The Crucible
The Scarlet Letter
Slaughterhouse 5
Ethan Frome
Freakonomics
1984
Brave New World
The Old Man and the Sea
Animal Farm
Mere Christianity

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I'll add my Grade 12 titles that were required:

Things Fall Apart
Their Eyes were Watching God
The Road
Wuthering Heights
The Death of a Salesman
Angela's Ashes
Song of Solomon
The Crucible

Also, a handful of poems from Blake, Hughes, Cullen, and Frost.

My school was seriously lacking in choice in comparison with most. We read:

Macbeth
Of Mice and Men
An Inspector Calls
Romeo and Juliet
And analysed two war poems.

Pretty poor, really.

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Originally Posted by Neely

I was thinking that was a little short on the primary texts for first year degree, but then I saw that you were doing history too so it seems about right. Either way it goes to show just how limited GCSE study really is in terms of breath of material. I know that it is only situated in the 14-16 age range, and everything that comes with that, exams/coursework etc, but in terms of the vast majority of people who don't study literature beyond this level for me only shows its real inadequacy in giving people a wider scope of what is out there. Not good enough for me at all. Yes there would have been extracts of things further down the line, perhaps a whole Shakespeare play (usually Romeo and Juliet) but in terms of providing the vast amount of people in society with anything like a timeline of literature the two year GCSE certificate is far from anything like acceptable for me.

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Of course a student will also study and analyse poetry, newspaper and magazine articles, radio and TV scripts. But you are right there doesn't seem to be much Literature in there.

Huckleberry Finn
Catcher in the Rye
The Great Gatsby
Romeo and Juliet
Ragtime
The Godfather
Heart of Darkness
Agape Agape
Cosmopolis
The Road
Coming Through Slaughter
Endgame
King Lear
Canterbury Tales
The Duchess of Malfi
Everyman
Beowulf
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Many more but can't remember off the top of my head

I've been working as a teaching assistant in the English department of my old school the past week, as I'm still at university. I've brushed up on the syllabus they are currently using, the sixth form (ages 16-18) changes fairly often, anything pre-age 16 rarely changes.

Ages 11-16 have looked at the texts: A Midsummer Night's Dream, Sherlock Holmes, Holes, Boy In Striped Pyjamas, An Inspector Calls, Lord Of The Flies, Jaws, poetry by Yeats, Duffy, Armitage, as well as war poetry such as Wilfred Owen. That's all I've picked up on but I'm sure there'll be more.

Ages 16-18 in recent years tend to cover a Shakespeare in each year, a poet in each year as well as a couple of novels. I studied Tennyson, Measure For Measure, Richard III, French Lieutenants Woman, Top Girls as well as the synoptic paper when I was in Sixth Form (3 years ago). Since it has changed to texts including Orthello, Dubliners, A Christmas Carol, more Tennyson.

The American Declaration of Independence.

For GCSEs I read Journey's End, Macbeth, a collection of poems pre-1914 and post-1914, collection of short stories based on culture and, of course, Of Mice and Men.
To be honest, I don't care what's required reading. The texts are easy to read and analyse. I've always done my own reading. In my class, the vast majority just didn't care. The kids connect the books to school and, no matter how great the book or poem is, they just won't care. I'm not saying none of them care, I did, but the vast majority don't. Most of my friends couldn't remember the last time they read a book.

In high school I remember:
Lord of the Flies
A Sound of Thunder
Romeo & Juliet
Julius Caesar
Speak
Fahrenheit 451
The Metamorphosis
Pride & Prejudice
Macbeth

This is all I recall and I only graduated 1 year ago! They were all boring except P&P, Metamorphosis, and LOTF somewhat.

Some of you got good ones like 1984, Tale of Two Cities, The Road, and even Freakonomics.

I remember having to read, in order
Antigone
The Bean Trees
Romeo and Juliet
Great Expectations
Lord of the Flies
Of Mice and Men
Girl with a Pearl Earring
Brave New World
Macbeth
Heart of Darkness
The Stranger
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
The Catcher in the Rye
The Great Gatsby
and Pride and Prejudice.
I'm sure I forgot some.

As to what should be read, I really wish they had made us read Anna Karenina so I could have discovered it earlier. Brideshead Revisited also seems like a good choice.

By "English schools " did you mean only schools in Great Britain? I went to an American school but my Freshman year we read the first part of David Copperfield, Sophomore year Julius Caesar and A Separate Peace, Junior year The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (Maybe that shouldn't count, as it was only a story) and Senior year Beuowolf, Canterberry Tales,Hamlet and She Stoops to Conquer.

Assuming the OP meant English school as in schools from the UK, then there aren't actually any specific books that you HAVE to read. You just have to choose a certain few from different styles/eras. I'm pretty sure you have to study two novels, two poets, and two plays.

Thanks

You are talking here about english schools. However I want to mention about the situation in the country where I live in. Here pupils have to read only fragments. Do you read in UK all novels (I mean not fragments) ?

When I took my English literature O level in 1983, we studied Macbeth, Jane Eyre and some poems, but I cannot remember what the poems were. I got a C. Also from school, I can remember reading

Julius Caesar
Animal Farm
A Christmas Carol
War of the Worlds
Great Expectations (extracts)
A Tale of Two Cities (extracts)

I think we were supposed to read quite a lot of them as homework, which obviously I didn't do.

Poetry wise, I can remember us doing

Daffodils (William Wordsworth)
Upon Westminster Bridge (William Wordsworth)
Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard (Thomas Gray)
Sea Fever (John Masefield)
Cargoes (John Masefield)
Let me not to the Marriage of True Minds (William Shakespeare)

Grades 9-12 only, all that I can recall:

The Great Gatsby
Old Man and the Sea
*1984
*A Tale of Two Cities
*The Scarlet Letter
The Crucible
A Raisin in the Sun
Death of a Salesman
You Can't Take it With You
The Color Purple
Henry V
Macbeth
Othello
Shakespeare's Sonnets
Hamlet
Deliverance (James Dickey)
Notes from Underground
Death of Ivan Ilyich
Catcher in the Rye
The Color of Water
Nine Stories
Araby
The Dead
The Metamorphosis
The Wasteland
Several poems by Walt Whitman, Robert Frost, and many others I can't recall


*Assigned in History, not English

P.S. I read Lord of the Flies, To Kill a Mockingbird, and Julius Caesar in 8th grade I think.

Wow no body mentioned Poe!,,I remember Reading a lot of American short stories,,,,,,,of course I'm talking early 60's

poetaster and I have just been talking a little bit about hawthorne and young goodman brown! what a neat coincidence.

Did you mean in schools in England? Or schools in countries that speak English as a first language?