First Year Writing Courses: What's the Purpose?

Erika Lindemann asserts that the purpose of freshman composition courses is primary and must precede any debate on whether or not literature may be taught in composition classrooms. A series of "I believe" statements about what a freshman composition course ought to do was developed. The primary purpose of a first-year writing course is to make students aware of their own development as writers, so they can continue developing as writers in their academic careers and in their future careers and lives. For students to develop their own writing processes, writing teachers need to encourage uncertainty about students' past writing processes; uncertainty will force students to carefully review different techniques and approaches made available to them. First-year writing courses should also help students to develop voice; student writers should experience writing in a variety of settings, non-academic as well as academic. On the other hand, instructors should prepare students to write for other academic courses, including those in the English department; in other words, they must help students learn to write arguments--a necessity at most institutions. First-year writing courses should also be organized around a general theme--"general" because it should allow students the latitude to find topics of interest to them. The agenda of freshman composition must be evaluated in the specific context of the institution where it is taught; the needs of each institution are different. (TB)