Graduating English majors should be sophisticated readers of texts and capable producers of texts, able to:

• recognize common conventions, forms, and styles of fiction, poetry, and drama or film;
• ask critical questions about how diction, syntax, and structure make meaning;
• understand that critical approaches exist and be able to use one or more critical approaches to expand interpretations of a text
• compose an original, extended argument on a literary topic, employing standard conventions of evidence and citation
• locate and engage secondary materials, and place their own arguments within the context of previous discourse;
• explain how social, political, cultural, and/or historical forces shape genre and other literary and discursive conventions;
• demonstrate familiarity with a range of historically and culturally diverse writers, texts, and genres; and
• reflect insightfully on their own reading and composing practices.

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