hen in 1968 Ellis Page and Dieter Paulus published The Analysis of Essays by Computer, they saw a promising future for programs that could evaluate both the aesthetic traits of essays and their substantive content (191). Now, more than thirty years later, the future that Page and Paulus envisaged seems to have arrived: computer power has increased exponentially, textand content-analysis programs have become more plausible as replacements for human readers, and our administrators are now the targets of heavy marketing from companies that offer to read and evaluate student writing quickly and cheaply. E-rater, developed by Educational Testing Service (ETS), is today used as one reader for evaluating the essay portion of the Graduate Management Admissions Test-a human is still the other reader. Intellimetric, developed by Vantage Technologies, is used for evaluating writing in a range of applications, K through college. WritePlacer Plus, developed by Vantage for the College Board, is being marketed as a cheap and reliable placement instrument. The Intelligent Essay Assessor, developed by Landauer, Laham, and Foltz at the University of Colorado, is now being marketed through their company, Knowledge Analysis Technologies, to evaluate essay exams for college courses across disciplines. The firms that are marketing the machine scoring of student writing all explicitly or implicitly define the task of reading, evaluating, and responding to student writing not as a complex, demanding, and rewarding aspect of our teaching, but as a burden that should be lifted from our shoulders. The current scene in American postsecondary

Begins with a quick history of the English profession’s response to the prospect/specter of the computer as reader of student writing. Describes two programs that are now being heavily marketed and publicized nationally. Sketches out some of the implications of these programs for members of the profession of English in America.

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Preface Introduction: Writing a History of Computers and Composition Studies 1979-1982: The Professions Early Experience with Modern Technology 1983-1985: Growth and Enthusiasm 1986-1988: Emerging Research, Theory, and Professionalism 1989-1991: Coming of Age: The Rise of Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives and a Consideration of Difference 1992-1994: Looking Forward Afterword Author Index Subject Index

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Recent Surveys indicate that writing-in-the-disciplines programs have been established or projected by more than one-third of the colleges and universities in the United States. The fourteen essays in this volume chart the history of this interdisciplinary development in both the United States and Great Britain and examine the wide range of forms that writing-in-the-disciplines programs have taken in American higher education. The collection outlines the social, intellectual, and political forces that have shaped the movement; presents perspectives on the programs from disciplines outside English studies; describes the relations among writing, reaching, and learning; and considers the future of the movement.This work is perhaps the only book-length treatment of the subject to explore the historical roots before turning to the practitioners (a number of whom helped invent the field).... Recommended. Choice

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John Paul Russo. I. A. Richards: His Life and Work. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989. 843 pages. Robert J. Connors, ed., Selected Essays of Edward P. J. Corbett. Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1989. xxii + 359. W. Ross Winterowd, The Culture and Politics of Literacy. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989. 226 pages. Booth, Wayne C. The Company We Keep: An Ethics of Fiction. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. xii + 557 pages. Chris Anderson, ed., Literary Nonfiction: Theory, Criticism, Pedagogy. Carbondale and Edwardsville, Illinois: Southern Illinois University Press, pp. xxvi + 337, 1989.

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Secondary English teachers are in trouble, and they need our help, particularly in the design of curriculum and in the application of research to practice. School committees and Time magazine blame the high schools for the writing crisis, the reading crisis, and the mathematics crisis. High-school English departments are responsible for two of these three R subjects, and the back-to-basics movement has subjected these English teachers to intense pressure not only from the public but also from a publishing industry which is hustling curriculum materials of all kinds, offering a quick fix for a quick buck. Besieged on all sides, the high-school English teacher is an embattled colleague, and college and university English departments must help. Furthermore, in-service teacher training has an effect that is wonderfully broad. One high-school teacher will work with as many as 150 students in a year. If we can increase that teacher's effectiveness and if that teacher continues in the profession for ten years, we have improved the secondary education of nearly 1,500 students. These students will, many of them, appear in college classes. To the extent that they do, we become direct beneficiaries of our own good works. So much for noblesse. In-service teacher training is an activity that also serves our own unenlightened professional self-interest. First, it does not demand from us mas-

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