Colleagues, it's that time of year again when Brock University's rather
naive English dept dreams up unusual things to do to its young writing
program, and so I need your help with a couple of questions about Canadian
1st-year writing courses:
1) Do any Canadian universities or colleges offer 2-course sequences in 1st
year? I know these are common in the US, but general ed requirements are
also common there. I'm not aware of any such Canadian offerings (correct
my ignorance please) and I'm hoping Brock sees the wisdom of doing one
course well rather than two courses poorly. Writing is not required at
Brock, so students here drop out of the second-term course after surviving
the poorly designed first-term course. (Of course, Brock's English dept
blames everybody but itself.)
2) How many/few campuses attempt to teach writing courses partly out of a
lecture hall? Aside from Brock, I'm aware of only 5:
+ Toronto: Engineering program
+ Waterloo: English and Math depts (shame on my alma mater)
+ Ottawa: English dept (??? is that correct?)
+ Carleton: English dept (??? is that correct?)
+ Saskatchewan: Commerce program
Are there others? I need to argue that only 5 (or whatever) other
universities are attempting this, while the other 1000 or so North American
universities and colleges don't presume to lecture students into becoming
better writers.
Ironically, one of the latest proposals the dept floated is for an
upper-year undergrad course on writing pedagogy. Maybe some of the English
faculty here will consider taking it.
Thanks for your help,
All the best,
John
----
John B. Killoran, PhD
Assistant Professor
Dept. of English Language and Literature
Brock University
St. Catharines, Ontario
L2S 3A1 Canada
(905) 688-5550 ext.3886
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