In 1980-1981, a new requirement of a junior course in went into force at the College Park campus of the University of Maryland. The course was created by the University to ensure that future UM graduates would be more literate and more articulate than recent graduates. The staff of the new course chose to meet the University's goal by giving the course a strong technical writing or professional writing emphasis. The course is taught (with English Department supervision) by professors from every division of the University, and by professionals in many fields (from law to veterinary medicine) from the Washington, D.C. area. Students write papers using subject matter from their intended professions, and they are graded on their ability to make that subject matter clear to students (semi-professionals) in other disciplines. This new junior course has led those of us who teach the freshman course to seriously reconsider what we are teaching. Since our course has shifted from independent to sequential status, we naturally feel some anxiety about possible new restrictions, but we also see the change as an opportunity to think through, more systematically, some crucial issues-what to teach, where to begin and end, and what theories should be guiding our discussion and analysis. We have decided that setting limits on content in the freshman course on the grounds that what we teach might be repeated in the later course would be counter-productive. Students, especially at the college level, should be tested, prodded, and stretched to their limits. Moreover, we-and the students-ought to be able to see a second course not as repetition, but as welcome practice. William Irmscher has reminded us (in Teaching Expository Writing) that better is largely a matter of better-educated intuition, and that better-educated intuition comes from repeated practice in reading and writing. We all know studies like the Dartmouth study reported by Albert Kitzhaber in Themes, Theories, and Therapy (p. 109), which show that

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