About the Department

Brief History:
The Department of English is one of the prestigious departments of this college. The Department of English in City College can, in its own right, claim to be counted among the earliest expansion programmes of this Institution with an august heritage. The Department was established in 1884 along with some other major disciplines of Arts. Since then, down the ages, the Department has been travelling along the path of sincere commitment to its learners. It has grown, developed and evolved itself with an objective of imparting first grade education to the students and doing its bit to add to the prestige of the College.

The Department of English is endowed with an adequately competent faculty, right from the point of its inception. Quite a few renowned personalities from the Academic and intellectual fields of Bengal had been members of its faculty. The very famous Bengali poet Jibananada Das used to be a teacher of our Department. Keeping this glorious legacy in mind, all the present faculty members work with untiring zeal to maintain the standard of excellence that was once initiated by the former faculty members.

The Department is always keen to meet the requirements of the curriculum. Both Honours and General courses in English are offered and the Department follows the syllabi of the Calcutta University.

The forte of the Department of English is its sincere commitment to all the academic assignments that come its way. The Department tries to maintain a good rapport with its students and the teachers are always available for any counselling that the students need even beyond the stipulated schedule of class hours. Frequent parent-teacher meets are held in the department to keep the guardians aware of the progress of their wards.

To maintain and enhance an effective ambience of teaching-learning the department abides by an efficient system of evaluation which works through frequent class tests, classroom quizzes and students’ seminars. A rich collection of important texts and reference volumes in the departmental seminar library adds to this environment of serious pursuit.

Overview:

• Names of Programmes/Courses offered (UG only): B.A. Honours and B.A. General
• Annual/Semester/Choice-Based Credit system (program-wise): Choice-Based Credit System
• Details of courses/programs discontinued (if any) with reasons: No programme has been discontinued
• Student-Teacher Ratio (programme-wise): 33:1 (Honours programme), 12:1 (General programme)

Ex-Teachers:

• Prof. Tara Majumdar
• Prof. Sumita Das
• Prof. Arjun Das

Infrastructure:
The department of English is endowed with a well-stocked seminar library and we share an ICT-enabled classroom with other departments.

Distinctiveness:

• One of the oldest and largest Humanities departments of the college.
• It has also got the largest student strength among the humanities departments of the college.
• Excellent Infrastructure for Undergraduate course.
• One out of five faculty members is with Ph.D., one with M.Phil. and rest of the three are pursuing Ph.D.
• Our department has a regular student mentoring system to help the learners academically and also in co-curricular and extra-curricular activities.
• The department is very much responsive and attentive towards the needs of the slow learners. The advanced learners are also encouraged accordingly.
• The department conducts parents-teachers meetings in every academic session to generate awareness regarding the CBCS programme and other related involvements.
• The department carries on with continuous and various kinds of innovative evaluation processes round the academic session involving students in powerpoint presentations, proofreading, library book cataloguing etc. and also acquainting them with current research methodologies like work citation, writing bibliography etc.

Best Practices:

• Regular Student Seminars
• Encouragement to students for presentation of PowerPoint slides related to their field of study
• Encouragement to students for working in groups
• Individual Mentoring
• Special care for slow-learners
• Review of Students’ Projects
• Use of ICT tools
• Additional special classes
• Field trips