WPA Outcomes Statement

CCCC '97 Outcomes Forum (Session L.17): The Continuation
WPA Conference '97 Session: first draft of outcomes statement for discussion

This draft is not an official document of any organization. It has been prepared strictly for discussion by writing program administrators attending the1997 conference of WPA. Any attribution or republication of any other sort would be a serious misrepresentation of the purposes and views of the drafters and of any organizations with which the drafters may be affiliated. The somewhat technical language is aimed at the specific and narrow intended audience for this draft. For further information about the draft your best contacts are Rita Malyenczyk, Chet Pryor or Irv Peckham, whose addresses may be found on the Leaders page. To comment, consider joining the Outcomes listserv. Send a blank message with the word "subscribe" as the subject heading to <outcomes@ethos.rhet.ualr.edu>

As professionals in a discipline, we who teach writing and administer writing programs should know what we want the outcomes of our first-year writing courses to be, and we should be able to articulate those outcomes for our students and for our other audiences: administrators, legislatures, accrediting agencies, the general public, our students' tuition-paying parents. In order to demonstrate our accountability, we must first specify what we will be held accountable for--and if we do not specify our own outcomes, others will step in and specify them for us. At the college level, adopting an outcomes-based model for college writing programs implies that programs will provide instruction and writing experiences that will help students demonstrate those outcomes. Defining outcomes, then, recasts the problem of accountability so that writing programs can offer courses of study that lead student writers to produce what can be generally recognized as college-level work.

The process of developing a national statement of outcomes for first-year college composition programs began on the WPA listserv and had its official kickoff in a forum session at the 1997 CCCC, attended by writing program administrators from a variety of institutions: four-year state universities, community colleges, small and large private institutions, Research I universities. This draft is an attempt to synthesize the results of that forum session and bring them to a wider audience for response and discussion; it is a preliminary gesture toward a national outcomes statement that also, we hope, takes into account the reservations many of our colleagues have expressed about such a statement. It is not our intention to dictate outcomes for specific writing programs, but rather to produce a statement that a wide variety of programs and institutions can adapt to their own uses.

The CCCC forum participants agreed on four primary outcomes for college writing courses: rhetorical knowledge, genre knowledge, writing-reading connections, and practice in writing processes.

1) RHETORICAL KNOWLEDGE. Students should be able to use discourse conventions appropriate to the purpose of the texts they write; they should also acquire the ability to treat the same data in multiple formats, to recognize differences in discourse situations, and to respond appropriately to those different situations. "Rhetorical knowledge" also includes the ability to recognize and write to a specified audience, to focus on a purpose, and to adopt appropriate voice, tone, and level of formality.

2) GENRE KNOWLEDGE. Students should develop knowledge of genre conventions ranging from spelling and mechanics to tone and structure. They should have a sense of what genres are; they should know that different genres are appropriate to different kinds of rhetorical situations; they should have confidence as writers within a wide range of genres.

3) WRITING-READING CONNECTIONS. Students should learn to use writing and reading as tools for learning, thinking, and communicating. They should have an understanding of the power of language and its use as a tool; they should also be rhetorically aware as readers, recognizing the contextuality of language and how language is adapted for audience, situation, and purpose.

4) PROCESSES. Students should be aware of the process of writing-- accepting that it may take multiple drafts to find a successful text--and should experience the collaborative and social nature of that process. They should learn to critique their own and others' writing, and within collaborative groups should learn to balance the ability to rely on others with the responsibility of doing their own part. They should gradually acquire confidence in their ability to control features of their writing and learn the steps necessary to carry out a writing assignment or task, including locating, analyzing, and evaluating appropriate primary and secondary sources.

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