Describes an experiment conducted by the English department at the University of Missouri, Columbia, in which a brief essay written at home was used to help place incoming freshmen in appropriate writing classes. (JL)

Describes personal experiences teaching English in a ghetto high school. Suggests that the college teacher of English should know how little preparation these students have in the way of thinking and working by themselves and how little relevance college education may have for them. (MKM)

Describes the events leading up to the conference resolution, provides the text of the resolution itself, explaining the purpose behind each of its statements, and urges teachers to promote the resolution by voting for it at the annual meeting of the Conference on College Composition and Communication in March of 1987. (SRT)

Discusses the use of psychoanalytic techniques to probe written works for their inherent biases of interpretation. Uses the authors' experience of teaching basic writers to analyze Freud's "Dora: An Analysis of a Case of Hysteria," in order to expose Freud's biases in interpreting Dora's experiences. (JC)

Two traditions are distinguishable in modern linguistic theory: the tradition of "universal grammar" which flourished in the 17th and 18th centuries, and the tradition of structural or descriptive linguistics which reached its peak 15 or 20 years ago. Universal grammar was concerned with (1) the relation of deep structure to surface forms and to…

A brief description of the English program for students of engineering, architecture, and industrial management at Lawrence Institute of Technology includes fairly detailed information on the unique features of the 3-term freshman English course. Less extensive reference to the details of the sophomore, junior, and senior courses precedes a short…

Examines students' difficulties in reading literature and suggests methods for helping them to develop and improve skills necessary for the mature reading of literature. (MM)

In the past half century, precisely during a period when a theory of language approaching adequacy has been developing, the primary function of the schools, to increase the user's knowledge of and about language, has been neglected. As a result, the gap between the concepts about language and linguistic belief, held by otherwise educated literary…

Extremists, whether formalists of the New Criticism or of the humanist-moralist tradition, are taken to task in this attempt to combine elements of both in a more pluralistic approach to literary criticism. An analysis of a Frost poem, "Stopping by Woods", is attempted as an illustration of a kind of criticism that seeks to clarify the parts of…

Remarks on the practice of class visitation at the college level in English courses are directed toward revealing critical weaknesses of such practice. Examples, drawn from experience, suggest that psychological damage to the instructor often results from direct classroom observation. A more successful approach to evaluation is discussed in terms…

Suggests that most current college English curricula, consisting largely of required survey courses, traditional electives, and new elective courses in subjects such as film and science fiction, do not appear to students to be coherent or to meet their needs. Offers two alternative curricula: one based on knowledge of alternative worlds, the other…

Discusses how discourses construct teaching, by examining "the Literacy Letters," a correspondence between pairs of middle-class teachers and working-class women enrolled in an adult basic education course. Challenges the ideology that class, race, and gender differences, while present in American society, are absent from American…

A course taught at Notre Dame on American Literature of the Westward Movement, in its broadest connotation, and thought to be the only one of its kind, is outlined. Organized by sections of the country, the course progresses from an introduction to: (1) the Seaboard and the Piedmont, (2) over the Appalachians, (3) the Old Southwest and Twain, (4)…

Excerpts from college students' ratings of their English instructor are presented along with some remarks about the usefulness of such ratings. Students' replies were concerned with the instructor's (1) knowledge of and interest in his subject matter, (2) effectiveness with explanation, (3) annoying mannerisms and eccentricities, (4) bias, (5)…

The central activity of literary criticism, the understanding of literature, is related to the process of establishing a context for the works of literature being studied. Choosing not to discuss the factual elements of literary criticism, the author clarifies and concentrates on the "lower" and "upper" limits of criticism. While the "lower" limit…