Writing Across the Curriculum

The Second-Level Writing Handbook // Creating and Implementing Effective Writing Assignments // Responding to Student Writing // In-Class Writing Activities // Peer Response // Preventing Plagiarism // OSU Resources.

Preface // Section 1 // Section 2 // Section 3 // Section 4 // Section 5 // Section 6 // Section 7 // Section 8

Download Section 1 as a PDF file.

The content of the second-level writing and related skills course focuses on "the American experience," as it is envisioned by the academic disciplines of The Ohio State University departments that offer the course. For instance, Modern Greek 367 deals with issues in Greek-American society and culture, while Economics 367 addresses current economic issues, like class, education, and the distribution of wealth in the United States.

The Second-Level Writing Handbook informs instructors of the General Education Curriculum (GEC) guidelines for all 367 classes. It also familiarizes instructors with approaches to writing in their discipline that will meet GEC requirements.

The Ohio State University second level writing classes use writing and speaking as methods of learning course content and learning conventions of the professional and academic discourse of specific disciplines. Through reading and writing, second level writing courses acquaint students with the issues of diversity that influence and shape their discipline. Students are afforded the opportunity to enhance their communication skills by producing writing that engages course material within the social context of their discipline.

This handbook is organized according to the following GEC requirements of all Second-Level Writing and Related Skills courses. Each course must:

• Deal with some aspect of the "American experience"
• Focus on writing in which students employ/develop their abilities to analyze, synthesize, and use evidence
• Provide students with extensive writing instruction and experience
• Stress revision as a site of writing instruction as students revise their work after receiving instructor comments and/or peer feedback
• Enhance student reading, listening, and speaking skills by encouraging the analysis and synthesis of course material in oral form

Each section of The Second-Level Writing Handbook will address one of these course requirements. The Second-Level Writing Handbook considers composition to take many forms in addition to the academic essay. Therefore, this handbook provides guides that facilitate many kinds of writing¹ including research papers, reports, position papers, critiques, letters, editorials, journal articles, digital media/multimedia, fiction and nonfiction.

¹Kinds of writing often is discussed as the distinction between discourse and genre and the definitions of these terms are subjects of continuing academic debate. For the purposes of this handbook discourse will refer to the academic language and conventions associated with a particular discipline (for example, the discourse of biochemical engineers). Genre will refer to a particular convention of writing within the disciplinary discourse (for example, within the discourse of biochemical engineering are writing genres that include: lab reporting, government regulatory writing, and grant proposals).