Program Vision

The First-Year Composition Program at TWU seeks to lay the foundation for a campus culture of writing by helping students acquire rhetorical flexibility and develop effective composing processes and habits of mind they can transfer to new communication situations and contexts. Our FYC instructors will draw on theoretical and pedagogical knowledge from the fields of composition, rhetoric and writing studies in order to deliver supportive and responsive instruction to first-year students at all levels of writing development across the university. Our goal is to assist students as they develop as writers through sustained, guided practice; collaborative reflection, feedback and revision; the cultivation of dispositions related to writing success, such as motivation and self-regulation; the development of metacognitive awareness and knowledge about writing as a situated social practice; and the acquisition of a range of rhetorical processes, strategies and knowledge they can adapt to different contexts.

Guiding Principles of FYC at TWU

Our students are writers, researchers and knowledge producers who draw upon their own unique array of linguistic resources and life experiences in the classroom. First-Year Composition is integral to students’ success not only at TWU, but also in the variety of rhetorical situations they will encounter throughout their lives. Writing is a complex set of cognitive, behavioral, social, psychological and embodied processes, all of which require metaknowledge to transfer from one context to another. Students’ composing needs extend beyond academic genres and “correct” prose to encompass a wide variety of strategies across multimodal communication spheres. The most effective teachers of writing are reflective practitioners who draw on theories and empirical research from the discipline of composition, rhetoric and writing studies.

Page last updated 3:37 PM, July 19, 2021