In teaching writing, I have a range of goals in mind relating to developing skills and confidence.

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Expression and Communication: These skills are intended to benefit the student in expressing concepts and ideas.  Such a foundation is important in nearly all fields; whether a student will be writing business proposals or lab reports, he or she must be able to write in a way that others can understand

• Purpose: how a piece of writing develops to a specific rationale for writing

• Audience: awareness and development of writing to an audience

• Genre: awareness of genre conventions

Use of Sources: Nearly all fields require the use of sources in some way.  Though the manner of use will vary across disciplines, the basic concept of developing a strategy, collecting data, and allowing research to be part of the writing process are constants.  Beyond coursework, awareness of reliability and allowing outside information to change opinions is a vital skill.

• Research strategies: when to research, how to research, what sources are appropriate in which cases

• Source assessment: judging the utility and reliability of a source

• Critical thinking about sources: synthesizing sources into one’s own work and allowing sources to change the direction of one’s own writing when needed.

• Source integration: awareness of genre convention for integration as well as general ability to fold source material into one’s own work

• Academic integrity: understanding of the concepts of plagiarism and academic integrity and how source utilization can complicate this issue

Analysis: Written analyses help students to develop cognitive processes of critical thinking.

• Summary: ability to discern main points of a piece; ability to discern and remove bias

• Synthesis: ability to pull different pieces together to form a larger understanding

• Analysis: ability to dissect a whole down to its parts, question the function of those parts, and develop defensible hypotheses about the choices inherent in those particular functions

Process: Every student has a slightly different way of approaching writing—or would, if encouraged to develop what works best for them, individually.  Working in drafts can help students discover their preferred balance of pre-writing to drafting, drafting to revision, and how to utilize various tools to their best advantage.

• Prewriting: developing an understanding of how pre-thinking, outlining, or “zero draft” approaches can work

• Drafting: developing skills to approach drafts, including reiterative and non-linear methods

• Revision: learning to revise, accepting revision, and working revision into their strategy

• Proofreading: tools for self-proofing as well as acceptance of the benefit of outside assistance