(See below for requirements met by English 280, information on the workload, and possible paper/project topics.)

You might be interested in taking English 280 if:

• you find yourself wondering where words and phrases came from ("tycoon," "squeaky clean," "buff," "ketchup/catsup," "boondocks," "cooties," "bellow," "loaf"), why the plural of "child" is "children" instead of "childs," why we use "you guys" to show we mean more than one person, but why we (annoyingly) don't have a way of saying "you guys" in formal writing, why we call a dollar a "buck";
• you've heard that there are people in the South who speak perfect Shakespearean English, and you wonder if it's true;
• you would like to know what the meaning of "is" is;
• you want to know why some people, but not others, remember the now famous contested line in the Pledge of Allegiance as "one nation, under guard," and why some people think the next bit is about the nation being "in a dirigible";
• you're curious about why a dirigible is called a "dirigible," anyway;
• your teacher told you "have done" is a verb in the present perfect tense, which makes no sense at all, and you wonder what THAT's all about;
• you'd like to know why Americans sound different from English people, who sound different from the Scots, who sound different from the Irish, who sound different from the Australians, etc.
• you wonder why some New Yorkers pronounce the name "Ann" as if it were "Ian," and why some Midwesterners pronounce "block" the way a Marylander pronounces "black," and where that incredible Maryland vowel in "snow" came from, and why Virginians and Canadians pronounce "out" as "oat";
• if you've ever been to Ireland, you have noticed that the Irish sound a lot like people you know in New Jersey, and you've wondered how that happened;
• you've noticed that the slang used in your high school is different from that used in college, and you'd like to know more about it–possibly you wonder how a piece of slang starts, develops and spreads through a wider area;
• you are surprised to learn that your grandmother may have been offended at the idea of being called a woman;
• you wonder what makes a poem and why poetry looks the way it does in English;
• you've noticed that people say, "The thing is, is that. . . ." and you wonder why;
• you're curious about how the machine works that enables Stephen Hawking to communicate (and why he, an Englishman, communicates in an American accent with the machine);

Requirements Met. English 280 will fulfill your Humanities (HO) requirement, and the credits can count towards the Language, Rhetoric and Writing specialization in the English Department, as well as towards the Rhetoric Citation (approval pending).

Workload. Because the course involves learning details of how the English language works, expect regular exercises assigned as homework. There will be a midterm and final exam and a project resulting in a short paper in which you explore a topic of special interest to you.

Possible paper/project topics might include the use of English in advertising, in politics, in law, or in education, issues involved in teaching English as as second language, naming conventions, ways of addressing people (e.g., the development of nicknames, or how family members are addressed), exploration of a particular dialect, the use of metaphors or figurative speech in a particular field (biology, engineering, literature, athletics), analysis of a short text, and so on.

Note: This course is not designed to teach non-native speakers the basics of the English Language. Students interested in learning English should contact the Maryland English Institute. This course assumes native or near-native fluency in English.

Questions: contact Linda Coleman at LC22@umail.umd.edu.

English 280 main page: course description
English 280 course syllabus.