These are all upper-level English classes. What I've found is there are two types of English majors: the ones who do all the reading and writing but can't be bothered to say anything in class for whatever reason, and the ones who slack off on the legwork but still try to say what they can during class. It's weird. You can have two classes with the exact same people and one professor is able to get them talking while another is not. The reason is the professor wants to have a discussion but is providing more of a lecture. I have two classes this semester which are 30 people are less, they're actually in the same classroom (on a campus of 40,000 people) at different times on the same days. In one, the professor has a set of points for discussion where he goes from one to the next, and at each one he just kind of introduces whatever it is he wants to talk about and leaves it to the class for discussion. In the other, the prof so far has been speaking more on a theoretical level and not so much talking about the text itself. Me, I can go on and on about theories of literature so I can engage in that sort of a discussion, but it strikes me that most people are more inclined to talk when it's abouta specific piece of text rather than sort of abstract concepts of writing in general. So in this second class, the only times I've noticed a whole buncha people talking is when the prof first shows a piece of text and then the class comments. It pisses me off though; English majors shouldu be able to talk about broad concepts. Hell, that's exactly why I'm an English major, because on the one hand you can do the traditional "what does this piece of text mean" thing but you can also do the sort of more broad reasoning about concepts of how language and writing works. Oh well, freakin idiots, the damn title of the class is Literary Theory of the Romantic Period, what did they think they were getting themselves into?