Lakeland College - Academics

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About English

Lakeland College's English program prepares many of its students for careers in education, giving them an extensive knowledge of major writers and movements, and critical terms and techniques.

The English faculty at Lakeland know that reading can and should be an intense experience — an experience that combines a commitment to language, an eye for beauty and detail, an openness to new experience, and an analytically sharp mind. English majors develop all these skills and dispositions by testing them against some of the best writing and thinking in literature. In the process, our students not only become practicing literary critics in the classroom, but also emerge better able to find and analyze meaning in all parts of our textual world.

The English program prepares many of its students for careers in education, giving them an extensive knowledge of major writers and movements, and critical terms and techniques. More extensively, though, the English major prepares anyone for a job in the information age by teaching them to think critically, read closely, and write precisely. These abilities are fundamental to careers in publishing, communications, journalism, advertising, law, and business — any field that asks one to handle and use language with skill.

Students who major in English will be able to:

understand the central concepts of literary analysis, form, and history, primarily covering major literary works, authors, and movements in America and Great Britain;
analyze literature in terms of its formal, thematic, and generic qualities;
construct an interpretive argument about literature through the use of detail;
present written and oral arguments clearly and persuasively in both formal and informal contexts; and
appreciate the value of literature as an expression of personal, historical, and universal concerns.