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What Students Should Learn

Writing Studies Program Learning Outcomes for WRT 100 and WRT 101/106

WRT 100

  • Writing and Research Are Meta-Cognitive Processes.
    Students will demonstrate reflective approaches to research and writing that recognize the value of rhetorical awareness and academic inquiry. Students will also demonstrate effective strategies for researching, inventing, drafting, offering and enacting constructive feedback, and revising.
  • Information Has a Life Cycle and Value.
    Students will build on and revise their existing research strategies to demonstrate intellectual curiosity. They will recognize the importance of ethical source use and the rhetorical context of information; they will also engage with a variety of authoritative sources.
  • Writing Requires Entering an Ongoing Conversation.
    Students will learn rhetorical reading strategies across genres, recognizing persuasive moves in different conversations. Students will deploy appropriate methods of incorporating information, via summary, paraphrase, and quotation, as they develop their own arguments and distinguish between ambitious and unambitious claims.
  • Structure, Style, and Mechanics Are Rhetorical.
    Students will identify and practice rhetorically effective organizational strategies, style and mechanical choices, and citation conventions.

WRT 101 / WRT 106

  • Writing and Research Are Meta-Cognitive Processes.
    Students will formulate strategies for the creation of new knowledge. They will experiment with and refine reflective approaches to research and the writing process that are adaptable to a variety of rhetorical contexts.
  • Information Has a Life Cycle and Value.
    Students will practice dynamic and adaptable research strategies that respond to different rhetorical contexts. They will enact sophisticated practices for source integration and citation that acknowledge intellectual debts, establish credibility, and create new knowledge.
  • Writing Requires Entering an Ongoing Conversation.
    Students will employ rhetorical reading strategies in their writing practices to participate in conversations in a variety of disciplines and genres, adapting persuasive moves to rhetorical context. They will synthesize multiple points of view as they develop their own ambitious, thought-provoking, arguable claims.
  • Structure, Style, and Mechanics Are Rhetorical.
    Students will refine organizational strategies, style and mechanical choices, and citation conventions in order to make rhetorically effective, sophisticated moves for different projects.

Additional Resources

Top-notch, face-to-face writing help is available right here on campus at the AU Writing Center. However, Purdue's Online Writing Lab offers a grammar hotline and handouts to help with grammar and style. They will also answer one-time e-mail questions from non-Purdue students.

MLA Style Center gives you the official word on MLA citation from the Modern Language Association itself. While the Department of Literature and most of the College of Arts and Sciences use MLA, many departments use the American Psychological Association style manual.

For some traditional sources that have stood the test of time, check out William Strunk, Jr.'s Elements of Style and the Merriam-Webster dictionary and thesaurus on-line. College Writing students and others wrestling with writing and research questions will also find the official website for the program’s handbook, Keys for Writers, useful.