English Dept. Will Revamp Tutorial Plan

The English Department will discontinue automatic course credits for Honors junior tutorial after one more year of across-the-board credit grants.

Honors concentrators in the Class of 1964 will still take tutorial as juniors, but they will need Group II ranking or other special qualifications to obtain credit.

All Honors concentrators among the present sophomores will receive credit for tutorial next year. The Department will tutor non-Honors concentrators in both classes without credit.

Credit Reduces Requirements

Explaining the change, W. J. Bate '39, chairman of the Department, pointed out that tutorial credit reduces the number of regular English courses which students have to take. Because the Department already allows undergraduates to count an exceptional number of courses in other fields. Bate said that such a reduction leaves many students with too few English courses for the Department's general examinations.

He maintained that tutorial should "counteract" and "supplement" regular courses, rather than replace them.

Withdrawing credit from junior tutorial will not change the work load on concentrators, Bate declared. He said that the Department had envisioned credit tutorial as a two-course work load, but would expect only single-course reading from non-credit groups.

With this revision in its tutorial, the Department returns to what has been its policy, except for the present year, since the introduction of the tutorial program. Faculty legislation in 1958, however, compelled the large Departments to offer tutorial for credit automatically to all Honors juniors.

The Faculty's decision of this February to modify the distinction between Honors and non-Honors concentration allowed the Department to reinstate its old policy, which according to Bate had been considered "successful."