Many English departments employ world literature instructors with no obvious training in world literature. Ideally, all subjects should be taught by specialists. In practice, world literature courses are routinely rotated among an unenthusiastic faculty with generally no effort to remedy the situation by recruiting experts. Although world…

Experience using a freshman writing magazine in basic Rhetoric classes at other colleges prompted the creation of a similar one at DeKalb College in Georgia. Building a coalition of supportive colleagues; composing a statement of purpose; and sending letters with the pertinent information to freshmen writers, colleagues, and high school English…

In spite of difficulties in analyzing student retention in community college programs and courses, certain facts about student attrition are known. First, students who drop out of class or school tend to have lower grades than students who persist. Second, the ability of students to drop in and out of community colleges at will has negative…

This review of the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) Writing Programs was undertaken for several reasons, among them the rapid increase of research in writing, the inconsistency among courses, and the need to reshape and expand the programs. The report begins with a summary of earlier reviews of UCLA's composition program. Following a…

English teachers and the English Department are in danger of losing their identity. This paper describes the problems that English departments can expect in the future. Faced with budgetary cutbacks and public demands for teaching basic skills and for minimum-competency tests, future English department administrators and teachers will be expected…

This paper chronologically presents a history of curricular development dating from the inception of King's College in 1754 through Columbia University's departmental offerings in 1953. The comprehensive study of curriculums is initiated with a review of the significance of rhetoric during the early period. Systematic examination of the growth of…

Argues that graduate schools are overproducing literary scholars and underproducing composition and rhetoric scholars, who carry the increasingly bulk of the work in English departments, and examines, in detail, this split between rhetoric and literary scholars. (SRT)

Reviews the responses from a survey of all former Lehigh University (Pennsylvania) English department majors for the period 1962-1982. Data on graduates' current occupations indicate that a major in English is more often a preprofessional degree than a professional one. (RBW)

A paper presented at annual Conference on English Eduation (7th, Syracuse, N. Y., March 29, 1969.) (Editor/RD)

Reports in detail the results of a 1994 telephone survey conducted by the Modern Language Association (MLA) of a sample of English and foreign language departments. The survey was designed to ascertain changes in department size, faculty vacancies, student enrollment and majors, staffing, and course offerings over the 1980-94 period. (three…

Considers the national curricular practices in college English departments, specifically with regard to "service" courses. Provides excerpts of data from the Modern Language Association's national survey of 92 English departments. (HB)

Describes the author's experiences teaching at four Taiwanese universities in eight years. Presents a way of dealing with students' needs called the discovery approach to teaching literature: the three main components are performances, activities, and journals. Notes that the Taiwanese students were hungry for talk about substantive issues. (RS)

Among personal memories for one minority instructor in literature is witnessing the civil rights movement, that defining period in which people of African descent broke out of the chrysalis of "Jim Crow" and transformed themselves from "colored" to "Black." In 1995, 1,000,000 Black men once again converged on the…

These four issues of the CSSEDC Quarterly (Conference for Secondary School English Department Chairpersons) represent the quarterly for 1990. Articles in number 1 deal with student teachers and include: "Student Teaching: Smoothing Out the Rough Spots" (Susan B. Argyle and Fred C. Feitler); "A Partnership for Urban Student…

The 26 articles in this journal issue discuss the use of the computer in the English classroom. Among the topics and applications discussed are (1) computer assisted invention, (2) word processing, (3) overcoming computer anxiety, (4) using computers in technical writing classes, (5) grading student essays by computer, (6) the experiences of an…