University Studies Program

Lower Division Requirements

Basic Skills — 12 s.h.

 

College Reading and Writing — 4 s.h.

 

The purpose of the College Reading and Writing class is to help WSU students increase their critical reading, thinking, and writing skills. The course will help students develop a mature writing style and an ability to integrate material from multiple sources with their own writing. The course will further emphasize writing as essential to academic learning and intellectual development.

 

This class is designed to establish a foundation for the reading and writing done in later college courses, supporting a larger writing-across-the-curriculum educational experience; therefore, students should take it as soon as possible, preferably in their first year and certainly no later than their third semester.

 

 

This class must include requirements and learning activities that promote students' abilities to:

 

a)     read challenging texts that reflect important cultural themes and demand critical thinking;

b)    analyze the rhetoric and structure of (their own and others') arguments;

c)     summarize and critique examples of mature expository and argumentative prose;

d)    revise through multiple drafts and critical readings to create and complete successful essays;

e)     formulate intelligent claims and make purposeful, appropriately documented use of authoritative sources as supporting evidence;

f)     make use of basic tools of research, such as general indexes, periodicals, and on-line databases;

g)    construct coherent essays based on reading, interpreting, analyzing, critiquing, and synthesizing texts;

h)    adapt the structure, content, and tone of their writing to the knowledge and attitudes of their audience;

i)      use vivid, concrete language; concise, varied sentences; unified, cohesive paragraphs; gender‑inclusive English; and a college-level vocabulary; and

j)      proofread, edit, and correct their final copy for common errors of spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and usage.

 

 

Faculty in all programs and departments can build on this preparation by helping students learn …

 

·       the processes and procedures for creating and completing successful writing in their fields;

·       the main features and uses of writing in their fields;

·       the general expectations of readers in their fields;

·       the technologies commonly used for research and writing in their fields; and

·       the conventions of evidence, format, usage, and documentation in their fields.