Writing Proficiency Requirements / Writing Certification Application

*WHAT ARE WRITING CERTIFICATION COURSES?

At Oberlin College WRITING CERTIFICATION courses (designated as "WR" in the course catalog) are those in which instructors require a substantial amount of writing but do not devote special attention to writing instruction. WRITING INTENSIVE COURSES (labeled "WRi" in the catalog) are a special category of WR courses in which instructors devote some attention to instructing students in the writing conventions of their discipline.

*WHAT ARE WRITING INTENSIVE COURSES, AND HOW ARE THEY DISTINGUISHED FROM WRITING CERTIFICATION COURSES?

As in WR courses, WRITING INTENSIVE courses can be taken to earn writing proficiency credit. (For an explanation of how these courses are used to fulfill the A & S Writing Proficiency Requirement, see below.) Instructors of WRi courses require a substantial amount of writing, and they spend more time discussing student writing in class and in student-teacher appointments. WRi teachers are expected to give students more detailed evaluations of their writing skills than they might receive in other courses, as well as comments on the content of their papers. These teachers are committed to providing writing instruction, not merely through evaluation but also by actively helping students learn the language of written discourse in their fields.

Several papers are usually assigned during a writing intensive course, and a certain amount of rewriting/revision is normally expected. Instructors often use such techniques as class "workshopping" of student writing in progress and group- or paired-discussion of rough drafts to introduce students to the rhetorical fundamentals of writing in the course's discipline. Peer tutors, trained by the Rhetoric and Composition Program to discuss writing with students in challenging but non-threatening ways, are available to help WRi course instructors with the task of responding to multiple drafts of student writing.

*WHAT AMOUNTS OF WRITING ARE EXPECTED OF WR AND WRi COURSES?

Students should expect to do a minimum of 15 pages of writing in a WR or WRi course. Although some instructors may find it necessary to incorporate the writing component of a course in one big, culminating paper due at the end of the semester, the Rhetoric and Composition Program recommends that several shorter papers be assigned. Often three 5-8 page papers or several 2-4 page papers leading up to a 10-page paper, for example, can give students a better opportunity to improve their writing skills over the course of a semester. In order to encourage students to see writing as a process of rethinking conceptual content and improving language through revision, the Rhetoric and Composition Committee urges instructors to count early drafts of any given assignment along with final drafts as part of the writing required for a course.

*WHAT KIND OF WRITING IS EXPECTED OF A WR OR WRi COURSE?

WR and WRi courses are expected to give students an opportunity to show that they can write analytical prose that fulfills a clearly defined purpose, with a strong sense of their audience's needs for clarity and consistent use of such writing conventions as spelling, punctuation, grammar, form, and structure.
Typical writing assignments in which it might be possible to demonstrate these abilities include analytical essays, research reports, book reviews, and critical writing of various kinds. Varying the audiences to which different writing assignments are addressed can also be an excellent way of measuring a student's writing ability.

*WHAT ARE THE CHARACTERISTICS OF “PROFICIENT WRITING”?

Students whose writing addresses its subject matter analytically and conveys their thinking effectively without undue distractions should probably earn writing proficiency in a course. Determining writing proficiency in WR courses should be a fairly straightforward step at the end of the term: the instructor makes a yes or no judgment of whether to record writing proficiency credit for each eligible student. In addition, during the course of the semester, WRi instructors usually respond in a more detailed way to students' writing, commenting on strengths and on weaknesses that might be addressed through revision.

For further explanation of the characteristics of proficient writing, see "CRITERIA FOR WRITING PROFICIENCY," a handout available from the Rhetoric and Composition Program (also linked to this document), which instructors should consider distributing at the beginning of WR or WRi courses. Members of the Rhetoric and Composition Program will be happy to discuss the criteria further with you upon request.

*HOW DO STUDENTS USE WR OR WRi COURSES TO PASS THE COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES WRITING REQUIREMENT?

To fulfill the graduation requirement, students need to earn two writing proficiency credits from writing certification or writing intensive course work in two different departments. For cross-listed courses, credit is given under the home department of the course instructor. In the special case of courses cross-listed in the Rhetoric and Composition Program and the English Department, composition curriculum courses (e.g. RHET 481/ENGL 399) are counted as writing proficiency credit in Rhetoric and Composition and therefore in a different department from literature courses in the English Department.

*HOW DOES THE INSTRUCTOR KNOW WHICH STUDENTS IN A WR OR WRi CLASS NEED WRITING PROFICIENCY CREDIT?

Instructors of WR or WRi courses can tell which students need writing proficiency credit by noting the Writing Certification symbol by their names on the class sheets at the beginning of the semester and the grade sheets at the end of the term. It is not necessary for a student to go through any additional procedure to be considered for writing proficiency credit in these courses. The grade sheets for these classes come with a column in which WP credit can be granted by indicating “Y” (yes) at the end of the line next to a student's name.

*HOW ARE WRITING PROFICIENCY AND COURSE GRADES RELATED?

In theory, earning writing proficiency and earning a particular grade in a course are separable. However, in practice it is difficult to conceive of course grades and writing proficiency credit being completely unrelated. In many cases students' facility in writing for a class depends directly on their knowledge of the subject and reflects their understanding of the special language habits of a discipline.
Often (although this is entirely up to the instructor of a given course) students writing A or B papers by the end of the semester are viewed as proficient writers. To determine the proficiency of students writing C papers (or earning lower grades), instructors will need to decide if the writing apart from the content appears to be fluent and well-controlled or whether the grade reflects difficulties in composition as well as C-level knowledge of the course material. If the former is true, the instructor might still decide to give WP credit to a C student. If the latter is the case, the instructor will probably wish to deny WP credit.
Ultimately, writing proficiency credit is not automatically dependent on a student's grade for a course. It is possible in some classes, in other words, that a student may make a high grade without demonstrating writing proficiency, or vice versa. An instructor always has the right to make this judgment, and students should not assume that earning high grades entitles them to writing proficiency credit for a course.

RHET/ October 2001

Writing Proficiency Requirements / Writing Certification Application

Site by: Andi Baruffi
Updated 10/12/07 by Robert Chester