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Dear CASLLrs -- First-year seminar courses can give some of the advantages of the small interactive classes focussing on university discourse and having real content--biochemistry being one version, but also literature, anthropology, biology, and physics. York had them for years, and U of T recently reinvented the idea too as an optional course in first-year Arts and Science, looking south towards Cornell for a model rather than glancing up Keele Street. They take "issues" or interesting topics from within one or more discipline, note that reading and writing are a good thing, and set a faculty member loose with 20 or so undergrads. About half the incoming students in A&S take these courses, and most who do value them for just the reasons we'd hope. They often get lots of practice doing reading, writing, and talking in meaningful ways. Students usually take courses _outside_ their eventual field of specialization, thus meeting their distribution requirement, but some use them as a way to enrich the bland first-year introductory courses for their programs. They're popular with students, though some avoid them as too "exposed" in requiring intensive language use. The profs also learn a lot: how well students write when given a chance, for instance, and how interested many students are in exploring ideas. The small classes make a fairly expensive way to show that "U of T cares," but it sure has good effects on recruitment and the Maclean's ratings.... If the new curriculum here goes ahead as planned, students will be able to meet a first-year writing requirement by taking one of these courses or another discipline-based writing course (including some ESL versions). That will be a hard system to administer, with real problems of consistency and control in terms of the actual instruction on literacy offered (or not). But at least it won't be first-year comp, and it will spread the responsibility for defining and teaching literacy among the full range of departments. (There will also be upper-year requirements, to be met through writing-intensive courses in the students' areas of specialty and/or some specialized writing courses. Much here to be defined.) Do seminar courses happen elsewhere in Canada? Are they inherently Canadian, or only here by default because there's no first-year comp? --Comments, warning, and advice gratefully received on the above plans to make them the foundation of a decentralized writing program. Margaret -- (Dr.) Margaret Procter Room 216, 15 King's College Circle Coordinator, Writing Support Toronto, Ontario M5S 3H7 University of Toronto (416) 978-8109; FAX (416) 971-2027 www.library.utoronto.ca/www/writing/ [log in to unmask]