Students who took English 111 before the college discontinued it in 2019 have until spring 2023 to take English 112, the required composition and literature class that followed it.

The college replaced ENG 111 and ENG 112 with ENG 101 and ENG 102 three years ago. Students who took ENG 111 but do not take ENG 112 by spring 2023 will take ENG 101 instead.

Alicia Morse, dean of the school of liberal arts, said after spring 2023, ENG 112 will be “obsolete.” 

English Academic Chair Wayne Kobylinski said AACC switched from ENG 111/112 to ENG 101/102 because the college wanted to shift to a writing-centered setup for general education English classes.

In ENG 111 and 112, students focused on one piece of literature throughout the semester. ENG 101 and 102 focus on research and writing.

Former English Academic Chair Dave Meng said substituting ENG 101 for 112—for students who took ENG 111 already— is “not a perfect solution, but it’s a solution. It’s not that neat sequence that we used to have from 111 to 112.”

“We all used the same required text,” in ENG 111 and 112, Meng said. “So we all tended to teach the same things.”

Kobylinski said this similarity was not the best.

“The college decided it would be more helpful for students to see a variety of different texts,” Kobylinski said. “The 111-112 model limited the content.”

Meng agreed, saying he likes the ENG 101 and 102 classes more. 

“This works better,” Meng said. “The students get an introduction to research writing in 101. …Then in 102 they do a more rigorous research essay.”

Meng added: “There’s a lot of flexibility for the way I can teach my 102. A lot of us like to have a theme for our course. And my theme for this 102 is, ‘What is justice?’ … And we read five texts. It was just fun to choose the texts that we read, to explore this question of what is justice? And a lot of faculty have that kind of approach.”