07/18/2019

WPA Outcomes Statement for First-Year Composition (3.0), Approved July 17, 2014

The most recent version (3.0) of the WPA Outcomes Statement can now be downloaded as a PDF (at the bottom of this page). Further information about the process used to revise the statement and the reasons for those revisions appears in WPA: Writing Program Administration 38.1 (Fall 2014): 129-143.

Introduction

This Statement identifies outcomes for first-year composition programs in U.S. postsecondary education. It describes the writing knowledge, practices, and attitudes that undergraduate students develop in first-year composition, which at most schools is a required general education course or sequence of courses. This Statement therefore attempts to both represent and regularize writing programs’ priorities for first-year composition, which often takes the form of one or more required general education courses. To this end it is not merely a compilation or summary of what currently takes place. Rather, this Statement articulates what composition teachers nationwide have learned from practice, research, and theory. It intentionally defines only “outcomes,” or types of results, and not “standards,” or precise levels of achievement. The setting of standards to measure students’ achievement of these Outcomes has deliberately been left to local writing programs and their institutions.

In this Statement “composing” refers broadly to complex writing processes that are increasingly reliant on the use of digital technologies. Writers also attend to elements of design, incorporating images and graphical elements into texts intended for screens as well as printed pages. Writers’ composing activities have always been shaped by the technologies available to them, and digital technologies are changing writers’ relationships to their texts and audiences in evolving ways.

These outcomes are supported by a large body of research demonstrating that the process of learning to write in any medium is complex: it is both individual and social and demands continued practice and informed guidance. Programmatic decisions about helping students demonstrate these outcomes should be informed by an understanding of this research.   

As students move beyond first-year composition, their writing abilities do not merely improve. Rather, their abilities will diversify along disciplinary, professional, and civic lines as these writers move into new settings where expected outcomes expand, multiply, and diverge. Therefore, this document advises faculty in all disciplines about how to help students build on what they learn in introductory writing courses.

Rhetorical Knowledge

Rhetorical knowledge is the ability to analyze contexts and audiences and then to act on that analysis in comprehending and creating texts.  Rhetorical knowledge is the basis of composing. Writers develop rhetorical knowledge by negotiating purpose, audience, context, and conventions as they compose a variety of texts for different situations.

By the end of first-year composition, students should

• Learn and use key rhetorical concepts through analyzing and composing a variety of texts
• Gain experience reading and composing in several genres to understand how genre conventions shape and are shaped by readers’ and writers’ practices and purposes
• Develop facility in responding to a variety of situations and contexts calling for purposeful shifts in voice, tone, level of formality, design, medium, and/or structure
• Understand and use a variety of technologies to address a range of audiences
• Match the capacities of different environments (e.g., print and electronic) to varying rhetorical situations

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

• The expectations of readers in their fields
• The main features of genres in their fields
• The main purposes of composing in their fields

Critical Thinking, Reading, and Composing  

Critical thinking is the ability to analyze, synthesize, interpret, and evaluate ideas, information, situations, and texts. When writers think critically about the materials they use—whether print texts, photographs, data sets, videos, or other materials—they separate assertion from evidence, evaluate sources and evidence, recognize and evaluate underlying assumptions, read across texts for connections and patterns, identify and evaluate chains of reasoning, and compose appropriately qualified and developed claims and generalizations. These practices are foundational for advanced academic writing. 

By the end of first-year composition, students should

• Use composing and reading for inquiry, learning, critical thinking, and communicating in various rhetorical contexts
• Read a diverse range of texts, attending especially to relationships between assertion and evidence, to patterns of organization, to the interplay between verbal and nonverbal elements, and to how these features function for different audiences and situations
• Locate and evaluate (for credibility, sufficiency, accuracy, timeliness, bias and so on) primary and secondary research materials, including journal articles and essays, books, scholarly and professionally established and maintained databases or archives, and informal electronic networks and internet sources
• Use strategies—such as interpretation, synthesis, response, critique, and design/redesign—to compose texts that integrate the writer's ideas with those from appropriate sources

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

• The kinds of critical thinking important in their disciplines
• The kinds of questions, problems, and evidence that define their disciplines
• Strategies for reading a range of texts in their fields

Processes

Writers use multiple strategies, or composing processes,to conceptualize, develop, and finalize projects.  Composing processes are seldom linear: a writer may research a topic before drafting, then conduct additional research while revising or after consulting a colleague. Composing processes are also flexible: successful writers can adapt their composing processes to different contexts and occasions.

By the end of first-year composition, students should

• Develop a writing project through multiple drafts
• Develop flexible strategies for reading, drafting, reviewing, collaborating, revising, rewriting, rereading, and editing
• Use composing processes and tools as a means to discover and reconsider ideas
• Experience the collaborative and social aspects of writing processes     
• Learn to give and to act on productive feedback to works in progress  
• Adapt composing processes for a variety of technologies and modalities
• Reflect on the development of composing practices and how those practices influence their work

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

• To employ the methods and technologies commonly used for research and communication within their fields
• To develop projects using the characteristic processes of their fields
• To review work-in-progress for the purpose of developing ideas before surface-level editing
• To participate effectively in collaborative processes typical of their field

Knowledge of Conventions

Conventions are the formal rules and informal guidelines that define genres, and in so doing, shape readers’ and writers’ perceptions of correctness or appropriateness. Most obviously, conventions govern such things as mechanics, usage, spelling, and citation practices. But they also influence content, style, organization, graphics, and document design.  

Conventions arise from a history of use and facilitate reading by invoking common expectations between writers and readers. These expectations are not universal; they vary by genre (conventions for lab notebooks and discussion-board exchanges differ), by discipline (conventional moves in literature reviews in Psychology differ from those in English), and by occasion (meeting minutes and executive summaries use different registers). A writer’s grasp of conventions in one context does not mean a firm grasp in another. Successful writers understand, analyze, and negotiate conventions for purpose, audience, and genre, understanding that genres evolve in response to changes in material conditions and composing technologies and attending carefully to emergent conventions.

By the end of first-year composition, students should

• Develop knowledge of linguistic structures, including grammar, punctuation, and spelling, through practice in composing and revising
• Understand why genre conventions for structure, paragraphing, tone, and mechanics vary
• Gain experience negotiating variations in genre conventions
• Learn common formats and/or design features for different kinds of texts
• Explore the concepts of intellectual property (such as fair use and copyright) that motivate documentation conventions
• Practice applying citation conventions systematically in their own work

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

• The reasons behind conventions of usage, specialized vocabulary, format, and citation systems in their fields or disciplines
• Strategies for controlling conventions in their fields or disciplines
• Factors that influence the ways work is designed, documented, and disseminated in their fields
• Ways to make informed decisions about intellectual property issues connected to common genres and modalities in their fields.

 WPA Outcomes Statement Adopted Revisions