Goals for the English Major at UW Oshkosh
Abilities
- The ability to read a familiar or an unfamiliar text in any of several genres and from any of several cultural or historical origins.
- The ability to write interpretive essays about various kinds of texts in clear, accurate, and effective prose.
- The ability to use reading and writing to address a wide variety of topics, problems, and issues.
- The ability to articulate a critically informed, carefully reasoned position.
- The ability to find (in a textbook, library, or elsewhere) the kinds of information that are relevant to the problem or issue being addressed.
- The ability to write and respond creatively.
- The ability to compare and contrast and to find patterns in texts.
- The ability to revise one's own work and edit the work of others.
Knowledge
- Knowledge of one writer in depth.
- Knowledge of a significant number of texts by women and ethnically diverse writers.
- Knowledge of a range of works written in different periods.
- Knowledge of the literary and cultural texts of one historical moment.
- Knowledge of the issues/debates central to English studies.
- Knowledge of a range of literary, rhetorical, critical, and/or cultural approaches to textual analysis.
- Knowledge of the social and cultural implications of historical changes in language use.
- Knowledge of changes in audience/text relationships.
Attitudes
- Recognition of the personal and social importance of reading as a complex and culturally significant act.
- Recognition of the personal and social importance of writing well in a variety of situations.
- Recognition of the centrality of language to human endeavor and therefore in the usefulness of English.
- Recognition of the importance of metaphorical thinking.
- Recognition of the importance of analysis and critical reflection as activities both required and enabled by language.
- Recognition of the interdependence of all the dimensions of language activity--reading, writing, listening, speaking, and thinking.