adapted from the WAC Clearinghouse at Colorado State University

http://wac.colostate.edu/intro/ 

What is Writing Across the Curriculum?

As one response to students' lack of writing practice throughout the university curriculum, Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) programs emerged in the 1980s. The philosophies underlying these programs generally agree on certain basic principles:

  • that writing is the responsibility of the entire academic community,
  • that writing must be integrated across departmental boundaries,
  • that writing instruction must be continuous during all four years of undergraduate education,
  • that writing promotes learning, and
  • that only by practicing the conventions of an academic discipline will students begin to communicate effectively within that discipline.
What's in it for me?

Including writing in courses has both short- and long-term benefits for teachers. In the short run, teachers are better able to gauge how well students grasp information and where they need elaboration of key concepts. In the long run, as more teachers incorporate writing into more courses, students become more and more practiced at using writing as a communication and learning tool. Especially for more advanced or specialized work in the discipline, teachers reap the benefits of having students who are better grounded in the fundamentals and ready to engage in more sophisticated analysis of ideas.

What is Writing to Learn?

Generally, writing-to-learn activities are short, impromptu or otherwise informal writing tasks that help students think through key concepts or ideas presented in a course. Often, these writing tasks are limited to less than five minutes of class time or are assigned as brief, out-of-class assignments.

What is Writing in the Disciplines?

T he second category of WAC is often called Writing in the Disciplines (WID). Writing assignments of this sort are designed to introduce or give students practice with the language conventions of a discipline as well as with specific formats typical of a given discipline. For example, the engineering lab report includes much different information in a quite different format from the annual business report.

Do I have to be an expert in grammar to assign writing?

Not at all! If you assign write-to-learn tasks, you won't want to mark any grammatical flaws because the writing is designed to be impromptu and informal. If you assign more polished pieces, especially those that adhere to disciplinary conventions, then we suggest putting the burden of proofreading squarely where it belongs--on the writer.

Do writing and peer review take up too much class time?

Writing-to-learn (WTL) activities take very little class time, and most teachers find they can give a quick WTL prompt at the beginning of class while they take roll and as students are settling in. Moreover, many WTL activities can be limited to just a minute or two--the amount of time it might take to answer a student's question about a course concept. Also, because WTL activities are such valuable learning tools, most teachers feel that students use any minutes given over to WTL writing very effectively.