Lost in transition: The case for close reading

Abstract

While applications to read English Studies at university are growing, so too are concerns about how adequately students are being prepared for the transition from pre-university to degree level literary study. Particular anxiety surrounds the growing emphasis on teaching context at the expense of close reading techniques - the latter being identified in recent reports as the skills most needed by new students but least well taught. Critics such as Terry Eagleton now lament the disappearance of traditional 'literary criticism'; but this loss should be seen against a background where English, even at A level, is increasingly taught by non-specialists or by teachers who themselves were not taught within such a tradition. Recent revisions to A level curricula have further diminished the scope for teaching and learning close reading, and the UK is now markedly out of line with international pre-university syllabuses such as the International Baccalaureate in this respect. In this context some universities are taking their own steps to insist upon evidence of close reading ability, and to encourage applicants to develop such skills. © 2007 A B Academic Publishers.