Karin Cardenas & Jessica
Toro
Writing 205
Professor Howard
18 February 2003
Why is Writing Important in
American Culture and Why Does it Make Writing 205 Required?
At
Syracuse University (SU), students are required certain courses to obtain
college credit, depending on their majors. Almost every major at SU requires that its students enroll
in Writing Studios (WRT) 205: Critical Research. Why is that?
Doesn’t college give enough assigned papers throughout our four years of
attendance? What makes this class
so different from other courses that require writing? Why is WRT 205, in particular, the one assigned course that
is required? Our WRT 205 class was
designated to research the topic: Why is Writing 205 required? In order
to answer such a question, one could go in many directions to seek information
that would help in our inquiry.
Our class was divided into groups in which each was assigned a specific
subtopic that might allow us to further investigate why WRT 205 is
required. Our subtopic, Why is
Writing Important in American Culture?,
helped us gain a variety of information and sources that would allow us to
complete the ultimate goal of this research assignment, which is to discover
why we must take this course.
A number of sources were developed for our research. Two interviews were conducted from faculty who thought writing was an important skill to acquire. The first whom we interviewed was Julian White, coordinator of The Writer’s Guild, agreed that writing is extremely important for many reasons, such as it being a very important skill that very few professions do not require. The second person interviewed was Christabel Sheldon, an academic counselor for the Office of Supportive Services, who is also an alumnus of SU. As an undergraduate student, she double-majored in Newspaper Journalism and Sociology. She too felt it was imperative to develop writing skills.
We
also looked up SU’s Handbook for Teaching in the Writing Program, a
handbook that describes the learning outcomes for WRT 205. The handbook lists the goals set for
students while enrolled in this class, the practices they will engage in to
achieve these set goals, and assessment strategies based on how the instructor
for the course will grade his or her students.
In addition, we researched English and composition departments on various university and college websites in the United States. This source introduced us with a vast number of writing programs, each having their own criteria and judgment about their writing curriculum and what it consists of. One of them, Arizona State University, stated in its mission, their understanding of the outcomes of writing and how their students can benefit from it.
Finally two excellent sources that we used to navigate through information about the purpose of writing composition were College Composition and Communication Journal and College English Journal. Both of these journals contain hundreds of archives that relate to important topics about literature and composition, which gave us an advantage on the amount of information that we could choose from. These journals also provided us with an array of different facts, opinions, and thoughts about writing composition from a diversity pool of individuals. These sources, along with the ones already mentioned, gave us a fundamental foundation on which to build upon our research and answer the infamous question of why writing is important and why we are required to take WRT 205.
In
order to conduct a research on why writing is important in American culture
today, we knew we had to assemble the right sources that would allow us to find
a reason for why WRT 205 is required.
We gathered a number of sources that helped the bulk of our
research. We thought interviews
might be helpful if we found the right people who can answer these questions to
our benefits. By saying the right
people, we mean, those whose opinions would lead us to a valid statement on why
writing is important.
We interviewed Julian White, coordinator of The Writer’s Guild, a program that strives to enhance student’s writing and communication skills by having students attend lectures and forums, write about them, submit their own personal and professional writing and have them published, as well as create their own writing portfolios. He believed writing was important because “there are very few professions that don’t require writing. It provides individuals with a voice that they might not otherwise have. In essence, it is very important.” White believed college students should be required to study writing, an important skill to develop, and the more they practice to develop their writing skills, the better writers they become. He also stated that all college students should be required to take WRT 205 because students can benefit from the course as it forces them to practice their writing and that can help improve it. (White)
“In today’s advanced world, writing is fundamental in every aspect of
life. For example, when applying
for a job, you are required to hand in a resume and cover letter. The employer can choose to interview
you or not and you can be judged based on your writing. This proves to show that writing is a
necessity.”(White)
White expresses the importance of writing and as coordinator of The Writer’s Guild, he acknowledges the significance to help students develop their writing as well (White)
Christabel Sheldon double-majored as an undergraduate at SU. As a Newspaper Journalism major, she agreed that writing does matter and it is absolutely essential. She states this because, “We must be prepared to communicate our thoughts, knowledge, wishes and concerns in a written format. Writing gives one a tool to express themselves formally, creatively and thoughtfully.” Sheldon also agrees that college students should be required to study writing because “no matter your major, as a college student, it is expected that your writing skills will reflect a certain sophistication worthy of reading.” She also believes that to her understanding of the goals and objectives of WRT 205, it is in fact beneficial to enroll in the course. However, she is uncertain that it should be required since “some majors may develop writing course essential to their field.” She gives us a course taught in Newhouse School of Public Communications at SU, NEWS 205, as an example. This course teaches a form of writing in particular to how journalists should write in contrast to how WRT 205 would teach its students to write. Yet she states, “Courses, intensive in writing, should be required though a student’s four year tenure at college.” Whether this may be WRT 205 or not, she suggests that students should take intensive courses that enhance their writing skills. (Sheldon)
In the early articles that were found in College
Composition and Communication Journal we found intense comments and oppositions
about the integration of the writing requirement as a whole. In one such critique, a man by the name
of Lounsbury states that first year writing should not even be considered being
that as college students we are still ignorant about what composition and
literary thought is all about. He describes students as being “crude,
thoughtless and indifferent and immature.” It
was believed that the courses adopted at Harvard and other universities
thereafter was not intended to be integrated into the universities curriculum,
but many realized that writing was an essential part of the academic
discipline. (Roemer)
Every writing course, within the writing program incorporates different objectives and usually emphasizes on particular topics. For instance, WRT 205 focuses on the importance of how to go about implementing critical research writing. In the article, “Reframing the Great Debate on First-Year Writing”, it states that “many programs emphasize cultural studies, focusing on the social construction of cultural assumptions and of authority. Textuality itself can be the center of study: how we use texts and how we produce them, how one text answers another. Some courses use a theme: multiculturalism, ecology, community, popular culture.” This gives students the opportunity to diverge from the traditional teaching of grammar and correct sentence structure to explore the possibilities that one could write about with these topics. It brings about thought, critical reading, critical analyses, and originality into their writing composition. (Roemer)
In another article entitled, “Persons in Process,” Herrington and Curtis observe
the manner in which students use their writing skills, as
which they see as an “ongoing
development of their personal identities, including their sense of themselves
in relation to others.” They feel
that originality, self-identity, personality is all linked to the way in which
we express our writing skills. In
some of the studies that they have done, they discovered that “college was a
time when persons are in process, recomposing themselves toward their futures.”
(Herrington)
The Writing Program, correlated to the English department, at Arizona State University, introduces its mission statement on the university’s website. It states:
“Our mission is to
introduce students to the importance of writing in the work of the university
and to develop their critical reading, thinking and writing skills so that they
can successfully participate in that work. Writing is intellectual work, and
the demands of writing within the university community include the need to:
synthesize and analyze multiple points of view; articulate and support one's
own position regarding various issues; adjust writing to multiple audiences,
purposes, and conventions… our courses encourage students to see that writing
is a way of thinking and that in the very act of writing about a particular
subject for a particular audience, the writer will construct new knowledge; to
understand that writing is something they can learn to do; and to illustrate
the ways in which writing and reading are interrelated by teaching students to
read not only to cull information from texts, but also to observe writers at
work and, in the process, to discover a range of strategies available to them.”
(ASU)
In sum, Arizona State University supports
their students taking writing courses because it can help them to develop their
critical reading and thinking, and write about it, as well as assemble a
broader knowledge of a new way of thinking. Writing is something students can learn to do and they can
do so through critical reading and observing the development of their own
written work over time.
As
our final source, the Handbook for Teaching in the Writing Program, we
believed it seemed to be a great source because it supports the importance of
taking WRT 205. If writing is in
fact believed to be important in American culture, this course should benefit
students with the outcome of acquiring the skills to become better
writers. One section of this
handbook entitled, Learning Outcomes for Writing 205: Critical Research, illustrates the goals, practices and assessment
strategies of the course.
The handbook states, “Writing 205 will continue to
build on the skills and practices learned in Writing 105, and will focus on the
skills and practices of critical composing and researching in academic
(traditional and online) environments.”
As a goal, students will learn to apply their reading skills to texts
through discussion and in written form. (SU)
Writing 205 will also aim to “provide a theoretical
frame for the writing and researching process.” As another goal, “students will develop a working understanding
of the potentials and problems of academic research and writing…” As an
assessment strategy, “written produces will demonstrate students’ understanding
of the potentials and problems of academic research and writing.” (SU)
It appears that WRT 205’s ultimate goal is to teach
students approaches on critical research and analysis, and learn to incorporate
this into writing. Not only will
they gain experience in producing their own research, but also they are to gain
reading skills and theoretical understanding, which will be expected of them in
their writing assignments.
Conclusion
Even though we have tried to describe the importance
of the writing requirement we have yet to go in depth about the whole idea
behind WRT 205, which is the importance of learning critical research writing.
With our evidence and our own opinion on the topic we believe that writing in
itself is an important discipline that we must learn to improve. The skills of
writing is essential so that we can develop our cognitive skills, our thoughts,
ideas, emotions about everything within and around us. It is a ticket to better
college grades and academic achievement.
We believe that with good writing skills and communication you are
likely to succeed and stand out among others. But we still need to further research the idea of why
critical research is important in our first years of college and what advantage
does it have for us to fully understand why WRT 205 is required.
Works Cited
Arizona State University. Homepage. Writing Program
Department. <http://www.asu.edu/clas/english/writingprograms/teacherresources/wpguide/missionstatement.htm>
Herrington, Anne J. and Marcia Curtis. “Persons in Process: Four Stories of Writing and
Personal Development in College.” College Composition and Communication Online 53.2(2001). Dec. 2001 <http://www.ncte.org/ccc/front.html>
Roemer, Marjorie, Lucille M. Schultz, and Russel K. Durst. “Reframing the Great Debate on First-Year Writing.” College Composition and Communication Online 50.3(1999). Feb. 1999 < http://www.ncte.org/ccc/front.html>.
Sheldon, Christabel. “The Importance of Writing.” Interview with Jessica Toro. February 2003.
Syracuse
University. Homepage. Writing
Program Department. Learning Outcomes for
WRT 205: Critical Research http://wrt.syr.edu/pub/handbook/205outcomes.html
White,
Julian. “The Importance of Writing.” Interview with Jessica Toro. February
2003.