Writing 100 Program

Force-Add Policy

As the semester begins, the WRT 100 program director would like to remind students and advisors of the force-add policy: The WRT 100 program director will not sign a force-add form without an instructor’s signature on the force-add form. Force-adds are rarely granted and are completely at the discretion of the instructor. Talk to the instructor first.

Description

The course catalog describes Writing 100 (Thinking and Writing) as a one-semester freshman course on a variety of topics that teaches writing as a means of acquiring as well as expressing ideas. Students examine essay components as a way of developing and refining their own ideas; write multiple-draft summary, analysis, argument, and research papers; and learn how to avoid plagiarism. This course cannot be challenged.

At the end of a WRT 100 course, students will be able to:

1. Use writing for inquiry, learning, critical thinking, communicating and engaging with the world.
2. Respond appropriately to different kinds of rhetorical situations and to the needs of different audiences.
3. Demonstrate control of generic conventions such as structure, development, paragraphing, tone, mechanics and design.
4. Demonstrate an understanding of writing as an open, collaborative, and social process and work through the stages of the writing process: invention, drafting, revising and editing.
5. Critique and edit their own work and the works of others.
6. Develop a specific research question or focus to respond to a writing assignment.
7. Identify a need for information and access, evaluate, use, and attribute primary and secondary sources in their work.
8. Integrate the words and ideas of others into their work and avoid accidental or deliberate plagiarism.
9. Write with clarity, brevity, coherence, and control of conventions such as syntax, grammar, punctuation and spelling.
10. Use technologies to conduct research and to draft, revise, edit and design documents.

In Thinking and Writing, students use writing, reading, and collaboration to explore and develop writing strategies for college-level work. Students engage in research, pre-writing, and revision with the help of their peers and their instructors to gain a better understanding of how to produce good writing and how to integrate the ideas of others into their own writing. Students also learn to document their research using appropriate academic conventions. Most importantly, students should gain a better understanding of their own writing processes by engaging in a variety of writing and reading strategies and reflecting on their work. Because class size is capped at 17, students can expect a lot of individual attention from instructors.