UWP 101

UWP 101. Advanced Composition (4) Lecture/discussion - 3 hours; extensive writing. Prerequisite: course 1 or English 3 or the equivalent and upper division standing. Instruction for students in all disciplines in advanced principles of expository writing. Focus on writing tasks both within and beyond the academy. Assignments provide practice in a variety of modes of writing: narrative, analysis, explanation, argument, critique. GE credit: Wrt (cannot be used to satisfy a college or university composition requirement and GE writing experience simultaneously). - I, II, III (I, II, III.)
 

Students should have completed UWP 1 or ENL 3 or the equivalent and have upper division standing. They should be familiar with the general principles of good writing, including organization, development, sentence structure, grammar, and punctuation.
 

Assignments and sequencing vary from instructor to instructor, but in general, assignments over the quarter will be increasingly complex and sophisticated. In the out of class writing assignments students will be given an opportunity to practice a variety of different modes of nonfiction writing and to develop the language and style appropriate to those modes. Students in all sections will write, outside of class, between 4 and 6 different papers. Some revision of these assignments may be required, and at the instructor's discretion optional revisions to improve the grade on a paper may be allowed. The course grade may also reflect a student's performance in such aspects of the course as informal writing (e.g., journals, pre-writing exercises, focused freewriting), draft workshops, and class discussions.

Instructors will typically select an anthology of non-fiction essays written from a wide variety of disciplinary perspectives (e.g., Comley, et. al., Fields of Writing: Readings Across the Disciplines). Alternatively or as a supplement to the anthology, instructors might choose one or more short works of contemporary nonfiction (such as a collection of essays by a particular author or a collection focused on a broad theme or issue). Instructors may use their own compilations of supplemental materials: possibilities include examples of professional reports and analyses from different fields, or other examples of professional, academic, or literary nonfiction writing. However the instructor designs the reading component of the course, the readings should provide models of style, organization, argument, and evidence as well as provide topics for discussion and writing.

Instructors will also select a rhetoric from among those targeted for advanced writers (e.g., Hairston, Successful Writing ); some instructors will also require students to purchase a writer's handbook. Often instructors will provide their own compilations of supplementary materials about writing.
 

UWP 101 does not overlap with any other courses. It is distinguished from UWP 1, Expository Writing, by its focus on the interests and concerns of students taking upper division courses and preparing for graduate study, professional schools, or careers. The concepts and principles covered in UWP 101 are more advanced than those covered in UWP 1. UWP 101 is distinguished from courses in the UWP 102A-G series by its broad interdisciplinary approach and its concern with the commonalities of writing in different fields and professions.
 

UWP 101 is a four-unit course. Three hours per week is lecture/discussion. An additional unit of credit is justified by the significant amount of work that students must do outside of class time to plan, draft, and revise the 6000 words of required writing. (The written requirement is equivalent to a term paper.) In addition to this substantial written requirement, students will meet individually with the instructor for discussion and evaluation of each student's work.