Academic Writing

Preparation, Experience, and Engagement

While English Composition is a time-consuming and work-intensive requirement, it will prove to be one of your most valuable general educational courses. In Making the Most of College (2001), Richard Light collects ten years of research showing that writing frequently in classes leads to better grades and to an increased engagement with course material (in other words, happier students). Light also notes that, regardless of career field, college graduates cite effective writing skills as their most valuable asset. Due to a barrage of similar studies, university professors are requiring more frequent and more rigorous writing assignments, and Freshman Composition will prepare students for these writing intensive classes.

Freshman enter college with a diverse set of writing abilities, but they rarely have enough experience with academic writing to function successfully in their future classes. Academic discourse involves a specific set of expectations about argumentative depth, evidence, and tone. Not only do students need to work with this particular discourse, but they also need to be trained in writing processes that will prove invaluable both in and out of college. Students will employ many of the skills they learn in composition classes, including prewriting strategies and revision techniques, in other college classes and in their future professions.

Your academic work-reading, thinking, research, and writing-will be part of a rich, ongoing cultural and intellectual tradition. The work in the composition classroom is carried out with reference to bodies of writings on social and moral issues of concern and interest to thoughtful, mature members of society. The texts students analyze, discuss, and respond to in writing engage questions pertaining to our institutions (government, the press, the media, schools, families), traditions (democracy, individualism), values (equality, freedom, competition, success), and problems (language, crime, race, gender, civil liberties). Although the issues we may study are particular to us as we move into a new millennium, the tradition of writing about such issues goes back many centuries.

Requirements, Expectations, and Goals

The University Writing Requirement carries with it certain expectations, both for you and for your instructor. Your instructor, as well as the university community, expects that you will learn how to originate, research, and develop a reasoned argument on a subject of significant interest and present such an argument in an essay that is substantial, complete, and well-organized; supported by logical thought and specific evidence; adapted to the needs of the reader; and written in fluent, error-free prose. Conversely, you can expect that your instructor will plan class periods that will prepare you to do such work, and perhaps even more importantly, your instructor will read and grade your work with care and respect.

Once students have fulfilled the University Writing Requirement, they are eligible to take advanced Writing Program courses such as Business Writing, Technical Writing, Imaginative Writing, and Editing.