The faculty at Yale solved the problem of large writing classes another way – they stopped teaching writing to anyone except students who wished to become professional writers. Their usual writing classes went from too many students to no students at all.

They decided that if you could read well, then you would write well. They therefore only taught classes in literature. 

We now know that the Yale faculty had the relationship of reading and writing backwards. Good readers are not necessarily good writers. But because writing teaches how to understand and organize information, good writers are almost always good readers.

The Yale Approach

Like the Harvard Method, the Yale Approach was based on the ideas of Plato. It assumed students already knew how to write.