UDM Writing Program
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Mission Statement
We the faculty of the English Department at the University of Detroit Mercy take writing instruction seriously. Writing and thinking well fosters and supports strong academic values that are meant to sustain students in their various fields of study. Our Writing Program is based on several fundamental premises about writing and reading. Writing functions as a personal, an academic, a professional, and a civic act; writing well leads to clear communication. More importantly, it is a means of learning. Through writing we engage in creative work as well as work that analyzes and comments on the texts and visual images with which we engage. Good writing leads to change in our ways of knowing subjects. Writing is a rhetorical act. Students in our program learn that writing is a negotiation among diverse writers and readers who use texts in specific situations for particular purposes and audiences. Therefore, students learn that in order to write well they must understand elements of writing from writers’ and readers’ perspectives. They learn to contextualize the materials they read based on the purpose and audience for whom the writers write. Unlike romantic images of the past, writing is collaborative action by writers and readers. Our students will learn about diverse values, assumptions, and ideologies, as well as issues surrounding races, classes, and genders embedded in the discourses that they study. These elements make writing and reading challenging, but they also motivate thinking and writing. Writing and reading are complementary actions, in that writers read texts, including their own, and readers rewrite the works they read. Because writers, readers, texts, and situations change, the kinds of negotiations and the kinds of writing that will be effective always change. Composing is a recursive process of generating, drafting, revising, and proofreading for specific contexts. Finally, writers must learn when to write for discovery on their own. Later, they rewrite for a specific audience and context. The writer's task is always to read motives and contexts carefully and figure out what kind of writing will probably work best for a particular audience and situation. Students should complete their composition courses with the abilities to do the following: * Discern the writing situation in order to determine which processes and forms of writing will probably be most effective; * Compose a variety of written texts in class and out of class through individual and group processes of discovery, evaluation, and revision, making choices among available options in order to satisfy the purposes and expectations of academic and public audiences; * Research topics and issues critically and integrate research to support persuasive intentions; * Analyze a variety of complex texts to assess the effectiveness of rhetorical strategies at work in them; * · Think critically about significant academic and civic issues as well as the discourse defining those issues; and * Reflect critically on their own writing through compiling a portfolio of work from their composition classes. .This skill may be adapted for other academic areas. Composition courses are conducted as workshops focusing on writing, reading, research, and revision. Readings are predominantly works of nonfiction. The experiences of these courses of no more than twenty-five students, with regular writing, reading, response, and discussion, help students attain a level of literacy necessary to their success as students, professionals, and citizens in a democracy. |
Helpful Links American Rhetoric |