The aim of this course is to help students become more effective writers by teaching flexible rhetorical strategies for researching and composing texts in different genres. Students must earn a C– or better in WRIT 101 as part of the general education requirements. Students can expect assignments that will ask them to inquire into different personal, academic, and civic contexts and read, analyze, and compose in different genres. We teach writing and research as processes and use portfolios to support writing development over the course of the semester.

RHETORICAL KNOWLEDGE

By the end of first-year composition, students should be able to do the following:

• Focus on a purpose appropriate to different writing situations, including different audiences
• Write in multiple genres with an awareness of how genres shape reading and writing situations
• Use specialized language from the discipline of composition to support learning

CRITICAL THINKING, READING, RESEARCH, AND WRITING PROCESSES

By the end of first-year composition, students should be able to do the following:

CRITICAL THINKING

• Engage in inquiry as a means of learning, particularly by using strategies like exploration, explanation, evaluation, and reflection as interrelated means of inquiry
• Understand the collaborative and social aspects of learning
• Appreciate the challenges of communicating effectively across differences

READING, RESEARCH, AND WRITING PROCESS

• Develop multiple, flexible strategies for writing, particularly inventing, drafting, and copyediting
• Learn to give and receive feedback on written texts
• Understand reading as a recursive transaction between a reader and a text
• Understand research as a process of gathering, assessing, interpreting, and using different data to compose texts
• Use a variety of technologies to facilitate research and drafting

KNOWLEDGE OF CONVENTIONS

By the end of first-year composition, students should be able to do the following:

• Use documentation appropriately and demonstrate an understanding of the logic of citation systems, especially MLA
• Control punctuation, grammar, syntax, and spelling

Students are placed into WRIT 101 based on the following ACT, SAT or MUSWA criteria:

A score of at least:

• 18 on the ACT Combined English/Writing section
• 7 on the ACT Writing Test Subscore
• 440 on the SAT Writing Section
• 7 on the SAT Essay Subscore
• 3.5 on the Montana University System Writing Assessment
• 50 on the CLEP Subject Exam in Composition
• 4 on the International Baccalaureate Language A1 Exam
• 19 on the ACT Writing subject score
• 18 on the ACT English Language Arts (ELA)
• 25 on the SAT Writing/Language test

If a student has scores ranging below and at this level, the highest score will be used to place him or her into a WRIT course.

Students who have taken WRIT 095 or an equivalent developmental writing course from another institution will need to provide proof of successful completion of that course and will not need to rely on the various test scores listed above for placement.

Students without any of these scores or previous coursework must take either WRIT 095 or UM´s writing placement assessment. Please see Writing Placement for more information.

For any questions relating to writing placement, please contact Amy Ratto Parks.

WRIT 201 is an intermediate writing course that connects the work done in WRIT 101 to the discipline-specific writing of the general education advanced writing requirement. This course is an in-depth study of contemporary rhetoric and argumentation that draws on the classical western tradition. Both as readers and writers, students will gain a subtle, nuanced understanding of the rhetorical effects of different writing techniques as they learn to interpret and compose essays and arguments that explore a range of cultural and historical issues. While different sections of this course may highlight different themes or ideas, the major genre focus for this course is the essay. Assignments address skills and abilities in rhetorical analysis, audience awareness, voice variation, visual arguments, personal writing, and research-based argumentation. As in WRIT 101, we teach writing and research as processes and use portfolios to support writing development over the course of the semester.

RHETORICAL KNOWLEDGE

By the end of advanced composition, students should be able to do the following:

• Understand the relationship of rhetoric and writing to participation in academic and civic discourses
• Understand the art of argumentation and have the ability to join academic, disciplinary, and civic conversations as a writer and reader
• Write in multiple academic genres with an awareness of how genres shape and are shaped by reading and writing situations and disciplinary contexts
• Have a consciousness of and maintain fluency with rhetorical decision-making as an important part of composing texts

CRITICAL THINKING, READING, RESEARCH, AND WRITING PROCESSES

By the end of advanced composition, students should be able to do the following:

• Practice argumentation as a means of critical thinking, or in other words, "ask pertinent questions, recognize and define problems, identify the arguments on all sides of an issue, search for and use relevant data, and arrive in the end at carefully reasoned judgments" (Derek Curtis Bok)
• Understand and use rhetorical reading, analysis, and criticism as a means of interpreting and composing texts
• Engage in information literacy as a means of invention, assessment, synthesis, and creative problem-solving
• Appreciate the challenges of living with diversity and communicating effectively across differences
• Use a variety of technologies to facilitate research, writing, communication, and document design
• Enact collaborative and social aspects of learning with ease

KNOWLEDGE OF CONVENTIONS

By the end of advanced composition, students should be able to do the following:

• Understand the logic of genre conventions and documentation systems
• Understand style, including ornamentation, appropriateness, clarity, and correctness, as a rhetorical decision based on the interrelationships of readers, writers, and texts in specific genres and contexts

This graded course is restricted to TAs teaching WRIT 101 or WRIT 201. 

This course provides new UM Composition Program teaching assistants with an introduction to the theories and practices that surround composition pedagogy. Through this course, teaching assistants will be able to take up the UM Composition Program´s curriculum with greater knowledge, authority, and agency. 

Two guiding principles articulate how this course informs the teaching of first-year composition at Montana. First, we want our students to realize "what composing is and to articulate the role it plays in shaping their intellectual lives" (Crowley, Composition in the University, 262). And secondly, we want our students to understand inquiry as a way of engaging in our composition classes, the university, and the world. To facilitate such an understanding requires that you develop a teaching praxis – that is, composition teaching theories and practices grounded in study, experience, reflection, and action.

Students in this course can learn to connect questions, issues and concerns of the discipline of Composition and Rhetoric Studies with the WRIT 101 and WRIT 201 curriculum and the everyday work of teaching. In particular, you will become familiar with theories of writing and teaching writing related to UM´s program, including topics like portfolio assessment, collaboration, rhetoric, reading, and research. Students will be best prepared to teach effectively if they learn about theories of composition as they relate to classroom practices and curriculum decisions to understand program philosophies, the curriculum, and to help guide daily decision making.  

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Graduate students who receive a teaching assistantship with the Rhetoric and Composition Program are required to complete a comprehensive, online orientation workshop in addition to enrolling in WRIT 540. 

The Rhetoric and Composition Program’s orientation workshop constitutes the beginning of a teaching assistant’s contractual work as a composition teacher at UM. The workshop is offered as a comprehensive series of modules available on Moodle. All incoming TAs will receive a letter from the English Department in the early summer with more details.

• Gain some initial knowledge of the questions, issues, and concerns of Composition Studies as they relate to the teaching of first-year composition. We´ll address questions like these: What are rhetoric and composition? How do we evaluate student writing?
• Begin to develop an understanding of the curriculum you´ll be teaching and begin to explore your relationship to this teaching context.
• Begin to develop confidence in your ability to teach WRIT 101.
• Acquire an understanding of policies, procedures, and your related responsibilities as a TA (and where to go to get help with these things).
• Develop a sense of community with other first-year TAs.

• All sections follow common course outcomes and share common policies.
• All sections assume learning to write is a complex endeavor that takes place unevenly over time and in different contexts. It is an active, rhetorical, and recursive process of inventing, shaping, and editing texts for particular audiences in particular genres and contexts.
• All sections require similar amounts and types of work.
• All sections use a rhetoric to help students learn about our approach to teaching writing. We´re currently using a customized version of Bruce Ballenger´s The Curious Writer.
• All composition courses use the same handbook.
• All sections use portfolio assessment.

These common points help give our composition program a coherent purpose and approach, and they help guarantee that each student who takes WRIT 101 at UM will have a similar experience and learn similar rhetorical strategies for researching and composing. Finally, common outcomes and approaches help guide instructors in designing day–to–day assignments as well as the arc of a semester.