Final Project Example

WPA Outcomes Statement for First-Year Composition 

Rhetorical Knowledge

·       Gain experience reading and composing in several genres to understand how genre conventions shape and are shaped by readers’ and writers’ practices and purposes

Define: 

This means I’ve written different types of essays and I know that different types have different appearances and rules.

Explain:

I’ve written several different types of essays in class.  The first was a narrative where the rule was to write about myself in first person.  Here is a quote from my narrative essay:  “I was a victim when I blamed others for my own actions.”  Since I’m using I, the reader can tell it is a narrative.  In another essay, I had to follow different rules.  For my argument essay, I had to use research from On Course and cite the information I provided the reader.  The rules for this are different from a narrative and I wrote, “In On Course Skip Downing writes, “Time is money” (24).  As you can see, this is not in first person, and I am following citation rules.  These examples show that I can write different types of essays with different rules.

* Develop facility in responding to a variety of situations and contexts calling for purposeful shifts in voice, tone, level of formality, design, medium, and/or structure

Define:  This means I know how to write what when.

Explain:


Critical Thinking, Reading, and Composing


* Locate and evaluate (for credibility, sufficiency, accuracy, timeliness, bias and so on) primary and secondary research materials, including journal articles and essays, books, scholarly and professionally established and maintained databases or archives, and informal
electronic networks and internet sources

Define: I am able to find appropriate resources for my essays.

Explain:

*Use strategies--such as interpretation, synthesis, response, critique, and design/redesign--to compose texts that integrate the writer's ideas with those from appropriate sources

Define: I can create essays that combine my ideas with those of others.

Explain:

Processes


* Develop a writing project through multiple drafts 

Define:  I know a writing project takes lots of tries.

Explain:

* Develop flexible strategies for reading, drafting, reviewing, collaborating, revising, rewriting, rereading, and editing

Define:  I have many ways to check my work before it is complete.

Explain:

* Learn to give and to act on productive feedback to works in progress

Define:  I know how to provide and take constructive criticism.

Explain:

Knowledge of Conventions

* Develop knowledge of linguistic structures, including grammar, punctuation, and spelling, through practice in composing and revising

Define:  I know how to use conventions correctly through practice.

Explain:

* Practice applying citation conventions systematically in their own work

Define: I know how to give credit to sources through intext, insentence, works cited.

Explain: