General Outcomes 

Students graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English  should be able to:

• Read analytically and perceptively, with appreciation for both content and style;
• Write cleanly and clearly in a variety of genres (across the range of academic to creative), and demonstrating a habit of thoughtful revision;
• Discuss intelligently the major periods and authors of English and American literature; 
• Employ fluently literary terms and other disciplinary conventions (e.g. MLA formatting, etc).

Further, it is our goal that students’ concentration in either literature or creative writing should be reflected in their fluency in a number of discipline specific values. Studentsgraduating with a literature emphasis in English should beable to:

• Evaluate literary texts, from a variety of perspectives: theoretical, historical, artistic, etc.;
• Form a defensible argument about a work of literature, which is supported by analysis, evidence, and documentation.

Students graduating with a creative writing emphasis in English should be able to:

• Understand, deploy, and challenge the conventionsof a variety of genres, including nonfiction, poetry, drama, short story, and novel;
• Employ appropriate literary devices in their writing;
• Reflect insightfully on the artistic process.

Students graduating with a minor in drama should be able to:

• Read dramatic literature critically, with appreciation for performance, technical production, and design interpretations of the text.
• Reflect insightfully on the process of creating live theatrical art.
• Engage confidently in one or more disciplinary facet orprocess of theatrical production e.g. acting, directing, designing (set, lights, sound, make-up, hair, costume), stage-management, house-management, writing).
• Discuss perceptively major theatrical influences andpractitioners of theater arts.

Graduate Outcomes 

Students graduating with a Masters in English, in addition to the learning outcomes for undergraduate English majors (literature emphasis) listed in the La Sierra University Undergraduate Bulletin, should be able to:

• Articulate the defining characteristics of the major periods in British and American literature, coherently framing them within the preceding and succeeding periods, and making insightful comparative andcontrasting observations about them; 
• Design and execute effective literary research projects,which engage the ongoing critical discussion from a variety of theoretical perspectives;
• Produce advanced level, persuasive rhetoric in support of their interpretive arguments about literature; 
• Participate in the professional activities of literary scholarship, such as conference paper presentations.