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Why Study English?

A Matter of Degree

Every quarter, the Department of English features on its website the experiences of a soon-to-graduate Ohio State University English Major. Our Summer Quarter 2008 interviewee is Eddie Worbis.

Why did you choose your major?

I've always really loved reading, but had been turned off to writing by my middle school teachers. During my senior year of high school, I had a really great English teacher, Mr. Stratton, and I rediscovered how much I liked to write. So when I had an inspiring, encouraging teacher again at Ohio State in English 110, I realized that I couldn't major in only English or engineering. I needed both outlets.

What have been some obstacles?

Earning dual degrees from two separate colleges has added some stress. Working part time every quarter was also tough. But the real problem was the distance that my wife and I experienced during my freshman and sophomore years. We started dating in high school. During my first two years of college, we lived apart, and it was hard to keep everything in perspective. But eventually my wife switched to OSU and she finished her own Ohio State English degree last summer.

What courses stand out as memorable?

I would say English 110, 201, 268, 398, and 577.01--the first four because of two great teachers. Lisa Kiser (English 201 and 398) has been very supportive over the years and really knows her stuff. Lara Hamza (English 110 and 268) encouraged me to write for the passion of writing, which has stuck with me. English 577.01, a folklore course that blended cultural studies, psychology, and fantasy, combined all the things I love to analyze when I read.

What advice would you share with other English majors?

Figure out what stirs a passion in you and then stick with it. When you have to get up at eight in the morning after a late night, you want to make sure that you're doing something you really care about.

Take a look at stories from previous graduates.

Fenner Undergraduate Research Award Recipient

Thanks in part to a Fenner Undergraduate Research Award this spring, Clayton Caroon, a senior English major at Ohio State-Newark, will be returning to Vietnam to continue his research on culturally appropriate English-language pedagogical methods. Caroon will conduct research on-site in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City to study contemporary educational methods and ideologies applied within its public schools, universities, and private English language institutes and academies.

The $500 Fenner grant is just one of several awards Clay has won for this project. The Ohio State-Newark campus has twice supported his work with $1000 Undergraduate Student Research Grants—the first time for an exploratory trip to the region in 2006, and again this spring in support of his upcoming return stay in Vietnam, where he will use his contacts, including teachers in the public education system and professors at the National University of Vietnam and the private language institution ILA, to conduct ethnographic classroom research.

"Clay is on fire," said Dr. Elizabeth Weiser, Caroon's faculty advisor for the Fenner award. "His research interests cross a great many academic boundaries, and he has managed to attract the attention of scholars from around the university."

During his 2006 Ohio State-Newark-funded research trip, Clay learned that the English language study offered in Vietnam applied imported English language teaching materials developed in England, Australia, Canada, and America. "However," he noted, "many of the language educators I met with said that differences between Vietnamese and 'Western' educational ideologies were a barrier to their students' language acquisition. I believe we can work together to begin to develop a means for greater ideological synergy between East and West. Ultimately, I want to help design better, more appropriate ways of teaching English that combine knowledge from the host countries with Western techniques and ideologies."

Clay readily admits that this is a long-term goal. "This field study is just the beginning of what I hope to do with this project," he said. Although he will be presenting specifically on Vietnamese pedagogy at the Denman Student Research Forum, another aspect of his work, which he presented at the Newark Forum, involves connections between Writing Center and English as a Second Language methodologies for improving writing. A peer writing consultant in the Newark campus's Writing Lab, Clay recently won the East Central Writing Centers Association's Outstanding Leader of the Year Award.

"From my perspective," Weiser noted, "Clay's research is far-reaching. He pushes forward the discussions in rhetoric and composition of what constitutes 'good' communication beyond the Western canon. He not only theorizes the intersection of language acquisition and deep-rooted cultural ideologies, but he also does so in Vietnam, a country overlooked by scholars that has a burgeoning ELT infrastructure and has sent large numbers of English-language learners to the United States. As he continues the work he'll begin with these awards, he really has the potential to someday impact the whole global phenomenon of English-language instruction."

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