Teaching FYW 150

This page is intended for first-time instructors of First Year Writing (FYW) 150. The resources included here should help you get up-and-running as you prepare your class. Please feel free to reach out to the Writing Program Director and/or the Writing Program (writingprogram@sandiego.edu) with questions.

About First Year Writing at USD

FYW 150 is a lower division course that satisfies USD’s Core First Year Writing (CFYW) requirement. Unless students “test out” (with an AP score of 5), or successfully petition for equivalence from a class taken at another institution, they will take FYW 150 their first year at USD.

The course description for FYW 150 reads: “Fulfills the core curriculum requirement for lower-division Written Communication. Develops skills in reading and critical analysis of multiple discourses. Develops writing within multiple discourses, and the transfer of those writing skills to multiple disciplines and occasions. Students practice the entire process of writing, from initial conception, through drafts, to revision and editing. Students are encouraged to use the Writing Center, staffed by trained peer-tutors. Must be taken in first year.”

Faculty at USD take a variety of approaches to teaching FYW 150 and are encouraged to pick their own themes and assignments, in accordance with the learning outcomes, their area of expertise, and pedagogical training. Examples of different approaches can be browsed in this website. However, to ensure continuity between classes, the Writing Program asks that all faculty address the learning outcomes (below) and include at least three Formal Paper assignments that constitute a majority of the class grade. Students should get practice responding to paper prompts that require them to assess and respond to rhetorical situations typical of academic discourse and college-level writing. Formal and Informal Writing assignments should total at least 5,000 words of new composition. Because FYW150 focuses on writing as a recursive process, revision of assignments, based on feedback from faculty, should be heavily emphasized.

Learning Outcomes

All FYW 150 syllabi must include the following learning outcomes, which were developed by the Writing Competency Area Task Force (ATF) Report and approved by the Core Curriculum Committee (CCC). Upon completing FYW 150, students should be able to:

  1. Write in ways appropriate to the audiences and occasions of each assignment
  2. Write effectively in or about multiple discourses by distinguishing among and responding to rhetorical contexts 
  3. Apply relevant and compelling content, based on strong understandings of assigned subjects, in order to write effectively across multiple types of discourse
  4. Use credible sources to develop ideas and arguments that are effective within assigned disciplines and discourses
  5. Cite sources accurately according to conventions of the topic and discipline 
  6. Write clearly and fluently, with few errors in syntax and grammar

A formal rubric based on these learning outcomes was developed by the Assessment committee of the of the CCC and is available for use. Faculty are free to use and/or adapt portions or all of this rubric. The Assessment committee also supplied this useful handout with additional information about teaching FYW 150.

Suggested Texts and Readings for FYW classes

According to the Writing Competency ATF Report (10/14/15), the goal of this course is “to help students recognize that many different kinds of writing and discourse are found across academia and in public media, the workplace, and elsewhere.” There is no one required textbook for the FYW 150 courses.  Faculty can choose the theme of their courses and should choose texts about that theme that come from multiple discourses, disciplines, and genres.

Additionally, the Writing Program strongly encourages faculty to include readings that fall into the “writings about writing” category. These “readings” may fall into a broad range of genres and media, but should introduce students to college-level frameworks for understanding discourse, language use, genre theory, writing process, critical thinking, or argument and rhetorical analysis. For examples of these types of readings, consult the Readings tab in this website. Additional readings can be found on this site and in the following open-source textbooks: