English 10600 Goals, Means, and Outcomes

Goals

1. To help students develop effective and efficient processes for writing by providing practice with planning, drafting, revising, and editing their writing in multiple genres using a variety of media.
   
2. To provide students with opportunities to write as a means of discovery and learning about themselves; as an integral part of inquiry about the material, social, and cultural contexts they share with others; and as a means of exploring, understanding, and evaluating ideas in academic disciplines.
   
3. To help students develop their abilities to create, interpret and evaluate a variety of types of texts integrating verbal and visual components.
   
4. To prepare students for writing in later university courses across the curriculum by helping them learn to articulate, develop, and support a point through both first-hand and archival research.
   
5. To help students understand that they can and should use writing for multiple academic, civic, and personal purposes.
   
6. To help students understand the inherent rhetorical situation of writing.
   
7. To teach students to use the conventions of form, style, and citation and documentation of sources that are appropriate to their purposes for composing in a variety of media for a variety of rhetorical contexts.
   
8. To demonstrate that coherent structure, effective style, and grammatical and mechanical correctness contribute to a writer's credibility and authority.

Means

• Completion of textual interpretation and production assignments in a variety of genres and a variety of media, including print, computer-mediated, and mass media.
  
• Frequent, periodic review of and commentary on successive drafts of writing projects by peers and instructor.
  
• Production of 7,500-11,500 words of polished writing (or 15,000-22,000 words, including drafts) or the equivalent.
  
• Weekly small-group or bi-weekly individual writing conferences with the instructor.
  
• Weekly in-class instruction in using computers to compose.
  
• Twice-weekly instruction in conventional classrooms using a variety of modes for learning, including attending to lectures, participating in class discussions, contributing to collaborative learning in small groups, and providing critiques of peers' writing.

Outcomes

By the end of English 10600, students should be able to:

• Demonstrate familiarity with concepts used to describe writing processes (planning, drafting, revising, editing, and proofreading) and effectively use variation of these processes in their writing.
  • Use appropriate and effective planning and organizing strategies.
  • Evaluate others' commentary on early drafts and incorporate useful suggestions into subsequent drafts.
  • Edit and proofread their papers to maximize their credibility and authority.
    
• Identify and state the purpose of a writing task they have completed.
  
• Adapt their writing in ways appropriate for different audiences.
  
• Explain why a piece of writing is or is not effective and suggest strategies for improvement.
  • Effectively evaluate others' writing and provide useful commentary and suggestions for revision where appropriate.
    
• Distinguish among conventions for citing and documenting sources in various genres and various media for various audiences.
  
• Make stylistic changes to improve the effectiveness of their writing.
  
• Demonstrate an understanding of the basic elements of visual rhetoric.
  • Know how to use commonplace software to create visuals that effectively make or support arguments.
  • Distinguish between information that is best communicated in visual format and information best communicated in text and make transitions and connections between visual and textual elements.
  • Be able to critique visual designs and formats.

DRAFT

Reviewed by Introductory Writing Committee April 2003

Purdue University