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What
Writing-Intensive Learning is
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Writing-intensive
learning recognizes two key ideas: first, that writing is more
than just essays written for grades, and second, that writing
is different in different disciplines.
When you think of writing, you probably think of essays and
research reports. But writing can be a great way to learn as
well. It helps you to sort out what you don’t know from
what you do know, and helps you to develop understanding of
important concepts and course content. In a W course, you can
expect different types of writing assignments designed to help
you learn course content. These assignments often aren’t
graded, but you might receive comments on them. This type of
writing is referred to as “exploratory writing”
(sometimes called "low-stakes writing"). “High-stakes
writing” is writing that is graded for course marks. If
you are taking a W course you might write your paper in a series
of stages and receive comments and feedback before you hand
in the final product.
You’ll notice that we’re saying “might”
here. That is because being “writing-intensive”
doesn’t mean that all courses will use writing in exactly
the same way. The important component that will be the same
is the emphasis on helping you as a learner and writer. A writing-intensive
learning course sets out to help you be a more confident and
skilled writer by showing you (with examples) how you can write
well. The skills you learn are intended to be ones you can transfer
to any writing situation, both in and out of school.
The other important concept of writing-intensive learning is
that writing differs between disciplines. You probably have
already recognized this if you have had to write a history paper,
a psychology research report, and a business report (for example).
Some qualities of good writing are universal. How you put words
together, how the ideas are organized, your voice and style,
and a sufficient grasp of syntax are some of the characteristics
of good writing no matter what discipline you are in. But different
disciplines demand different forms of writing, and have different
writing needs. Learning how to write well for your discipline
is key to doing well in school and succeeding professionally.
This is true not only for the traditional “writing areas”
of the Arts, but also for Business, Applied Sciences, and Sciences.
W courses use different writing assignments (both exploratory
and high-stakes) to teach you discipline-based writing. |
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