Composition Course Guidelines

Important as the ability to communicate effectively in writing has become in our hi-tech, global economy, national surveys and local experience suggest that undergraduates are not writing with the critical acumen and fluency they will need to excel in the professional world. Therefore, UM Provost Royce Engstrom will provide support for departments to develop a second course in composition for all UM undergraduates.

The new composition courses may be developed by any academic program. In this "distributed" model of composition, each program may use readings, exercises, and heuristics associated with the program's disciplinary focus. However, all sections of this new course will share a commitment to explicit instruction in the areas of close reading, critical writing, and critical thinking. Moreover, their common and central goal is to measurably improve student writing performance in academic and professional tasks. 

The new composition courses may be developed by any academic program. In this "distributed" model of composition, each program may use readings, exercises, and heuristics associated with the program's disciplinary focus. However, all sections of this new course will share a commitment to explicit instruction in the areas of close reading, critical writing, and critical thinking. Moreover, their common and central goal is to measurably improve student writing performance in academic and professional tasks. 

Proposed Guidelines for Distributed Composition Courses

Reading, writing, and thinking skills should be addressed explicitly and in equal measure in the course design. Specifically, a distributed composition course should seek to improve student skills in these areas:

1. The close reading of sophisticated texts;
2. The written evaluation and comparison of texts;
3. The application of the standards of proof, evidence, and valuation obtaining in a specific discipline. Instruction in close reading should include explanation and practice with paraphrasing, summary, drawing inferences, identifying the writer's thesis and assumptions, classification, and intertextual comparison.

Critical writing instruction and assignments should involve the composition of essays or documents that are appropriate to their audience, orderly, evaluative, analytical, and supported by documentation and/or argumentation, with proper selection and use of quoted material and sources. Instruction in critical thinking should teach those "habits of mind" that produce skeptical, fair-minded readers and writers who can evaluate the integrity of arguments and develop cogent and convincing ideas in their own writing. 

Tactical Guidelines 

The course guidelines outlined above offer the sponsoring programs a curricular structure without dictating specific instructional tactics. Some tactical requirements may be imposed as a means of maintaining consistency among all sections of distributed composition. Although these tactics should not substitute for the curricular guidelines, they may include one or more of the following:

• Ninety to one hundred percent of the student's grade derives from written work
• Each course must assign a minimum of 25 pages of final written work per student.
• Each instructor must apply the criteria used for the UDWPA in the evaluation of expository work.
• Each course must include at least one research paper.
• Each section will require the same writer's handbook as a supplement to other texts.
• Final grades will be based on student portfolio/exit exam.