WSP Program Info Site - Writing Workshop

Writing Instructor Position Description

Writing Tutor Position Description

Writing Instructor Overviews

Unit 1

Unit 2

Unit 3

Unit 4

Unit 5

Writing Tutor Overviews

Session 1

Session 2

Session 3

Session 4

Essay Project Overview

The Writing Unit provides the opportunity to work through and respond to the various ideas about democracy presented throughout the week. Writing workshop sessions focus on learning and practicing the stages of the writing process to produce a college-level essay. One-to-one sessions with writing instructors and tutors focus on the direct application of writing lessons and writing tools.

Learning Objectives

Understand the phases or stages of the writing process as it applies to college-level essay writing.
Learn how to decipher and break down writing assignments or prompts.
Analyze readings to identify arguments, evidence, and conclusions (i.e., what "They say").
Learn ways of responding to authors' arguments and, ultimately, how to contribute to ongoing scholarly conversations in ways that satisfy college-level expectations.

Essay Assignment:

Each of the texts you are reading for the course identifies key tensions between foundational democratic principles, where the embrace of one value may have a limiting effect on another value. For example, valuing personal liberty may have a limiting effect on equality; valuing the common good may impinge on individual rights.

Your assignment is to write and revise an essay that makes an argument in response to the following prompt:

Using two texts from your readings, identify two key principles of democracy that are in tension with each other. Then use your paper to make an argument about:

(a) How does this tension present a problem for American democracy?

(b) What are the underlying ideas or principles that produce this tension?

Schedule

Monday

Writing Workshop: Identify one or more passages from one text that speak to the tension between democratic ideas that you are interested in.

Write a response in which you slow-read each passage to explain the author’s idea and how you interpret that idea. Make a claim about the author’s idea or reasoning.

Evening Work: Revise your writing from the afternoon. Make sure you are going beyond the summary to offer an analysis of the strengths and/or weaknesses of the author’s idea.

Tuesday

Writing Workshop: Identify one or more passages from a second text that speak to the tension between democratic ideas that you are interested in.

Write a response in which you slow-read each passage to explain the author’s idea and how you interpret that idea.

Make a claim about the author’s idea or reasoning.

Evening Work: Review and revise what you have written on Monday and Tuesday.

Write a short description of the overall argument you plan to make in your essay.

Wednesday

Writing Workshop: Write an introduction paragraph that provides an overall claim/thesis statement for your argument.

Evening Work: Using some of your process writing, draft two body paragraphs that include close readings of passages that provide evidence for your argument.

At the end of the night, turn in your introduction and at least two body paragraphs to your instructor for feedback.

Thursday

Writing Workshop: Write one or two additional paragraphs to explain the next steps in your argument. If appropriate, consider analyzing passages from additional texts to further develop your overall argument.

Evening Work: Based on feedback from your instructor and peers, revise and refine your draft.

Add a conclusion paragraph.

Turn in the full draft at the end of the night.

Friday

Writing Workshop: In response to instructor and peer feedback, revise and polish your final version of your essay. Turn in your final draft.

Writing Assignment, 2023

Created by Karin Gosselink (Yale University), Keith Shaw (Princeton University), and Cassie Sanchez (Warrior-Scholar Project)

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