The development of a college writing program can offer many challenges to a program director drawn from the ranks of the English faculty. The discipline of writing, an act of production, is both scorned and clutched by faculty who have been trained to analyze literature, an act of perception. Literature specialists, to be qualified to teach…

There are three standard complaints given by teachers of freshman composition: (1) college freshman students are inferior to English majors and graduate students, or inferior to freshmen from when the teachers were in college; (2) the subject matter of a writing course is inferior to that of literature courses; and (3) those who teach composition…

In the many conferences, workshops, and panels for writing instructors the role of director of freshman English has been routinely ignored. The typical director does not even have a job description. But directors should interpret this lack of specifics to mean that they are not administrators set apart from faculty, but are engaged with faculty in…

This book presents a comprehensive description and analysis of undergraduate English as it is taught in four-year colleges and universities in the United States. The study discussed in this book was the result of a survey of 300 departments of English randomly selected from those institutions offering English programs. (An account of how the…

Presents and analyzes the qualifications English departments prefer when hiring faculty to teach business and technical writing. Indicates that most successful candidates are those who have completed degree programs combining the study of literature and composition. Also suggests that English departments should make their degree programs more…

Provides guidelines and practical advice for planning and running a computer lab for writing. (NKA)

Encourages professional dialogue to establish correspondent interests among college English faculty who have taken positions in defense of the teaching of either rhetoric or literature. (AEA)

Reports the results of a survey of the curricula of 259 college English departments which indicate that the growing demand for writing courses coupled with the need to maintain a well-balanced program of literature offerings is causing problems for departmental administrators. (AEA)

Writing teachers and theorists face political and pedagogical dangers because of their increasing tendency to align themselves against each other on the side of either rhetoric or composition. As the differences between the two schools widens, writing teachers stand to lose political ground in English departments and their students stand to lose…

The purposes of the Basic Writing Skills Assessment Project, begun in the spring of 1977, were to provide a review and assessment of the existing English proficiency program and to develop a data base on which generalizations might be made about the status of writing skills at Plymouth State College. This report was written on the basis of…

Presented at a writing center conference by English department faculty members from around the United States--all involved with writing centers--the papers in this collection relate personal experiences and discuss many of the problems faced by writing centers. The ten papers deal with the following topics: (1) the progress and future of writing…

Teachers in all disciplines must demand good writing from students if they want their writing to improve. When good writing is demanded only in English classes, students develop a double standard for their writing. To make teachers in other departments aware of their responsibility for the quality of student writing, English teachers can take the…

In an attempt to predict the future of composition instruction in college English departments, this paper first reviews the development of freshman English and the so-called writing crisis and then reflects on the ongoing argument over composition course content. The present state of the English department of a midwestern college is described in…

In 1977, to determine current conditions in the teaching of English, a questionnaire was distributed from the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) headquarters to a selected sample of secondary schools. Four populations were chosen for study: schools that had participated in a 1968 study, schools that had consistently produced winners in…

A disturbing gulf between the culture of the United States and that of Singapore, was noted by an American English professor after spending the 1986-87 academic year as a Fullbright lecturer in Singapore's Department of English and Literature and again after returning for the 1991-92 academic year as a visiting professor. Cultural differences were…