WRD 102 prepares beginning writers for college-level work by examining the nature of composing processes and the roles played by writers functioning in a community of other readers and writers. By focusing specifically on these issues, reading and writing assignments in this course help students to increase the effectiveness of their writing practices and to develop a sense of confidence in themselves as writers.
Course Goals. WRD 102 has the following specific goals:
- Students should become acquainted with the idiosyncratic, recursive nature of writing processes and with some of the specific features of their own writing practices.
- Students should understand the specific demands made by a writing assignment and should learn methods of finding material and developing ideas appropriate to the assignment.
- Students should experience writing in a variety of contexts and forms. Writing assignments in this course should include a number of different genres--for example, personal narratives, response papers, analytical/critical writing, reviews/evaluations, interviews, and journals.
- Students should develop a sense of audience for their written work through peer review of drafts of papers written for this course.
- Students should become practiced in discovering opportunities for revising their writing to improve its focus, development, organization, and impact.
- Students should develop their ability to write clear sentences, to use punctuation in conventional ways, and to edit for spelling and grammatical errors.
Minimum Course Requirements. Each section of WRD 102 is expected to meet the following minimum expectations for student work:
- Amount of Writing. Students will work on 5-6 short writing projects within multiple genres, building from 350 to about 750 words, as appropriate for the assignment.
- Drafting and Revising. Students will submit preliminary drafts of at least half of their papers for the instructor's review and comment, so that some weight in the final grade is given to the student's skill in developing and revising his or her writing.
- Student Portfolio (with reflective component).
- Basic Standards. To earn a grade of C- or better, students must demonstrate the ability to respond appropriately to a writing assignment, to develop a paper specifically and coherently, and to write with a minimum of syntactic, grammatical, and editing errors.