WTNG 102: HOW WRITING WORKS
Course Description
This first-year course helps students develop a conceptual map of how writing works by
building their rhetorical and writing-process knowledge and by fostering genre and discourse
community awareness. Students draft a minimum of four revised essays and complete a course
portfolio. Students must submit a satisfactory portfolio and earn a C- or higher in the course in
order to enroll in 200 or 300 level writing courses. (Lecture, 3 credits.)
Course Introduction
In College Writing and Beyond, Anne Beaufort defines a discourse community as “a social group
that communicates … via written texts and shares common goals, values, and writing standards,
a specialized vocabulary and specialized genres” (179). This class is an example of one such
discourse community. As a class, we are clearly a “social group,” and as this syllabus itself
indicates, we communicate “via written texts.” More importantly, we share common goals.
We want, for example, to better understand how writing works, and we want to use that
understanding to communicate more effectively in this class as well as in other academic,
professional, and public settings. We will also come to uphold certain values. In part, these
are the values of the university, which include respect for reasoned inquiry and for civil
