First-Year Composition Analysis

What a Feeling to be in First-Year Composition: A Writing Analysis on the Important Qualities First-Year Composition Instills in Sacramento State Students for Future Success in Academic Writing

First-year composition should be a requirement for all first-time college students at Sacramento State because it’s vital in guiding students through the courses they will take in college no matter their major or career path. The course introduces students to shift from high school writing to college level writing and enhances the necessary skills already present in first-year college students such as critical thinking.

College writing compared to high school writing greatly differs. Throughout high school, students focused on narrating an essay,

He argues the importance of the believer and how the skills apply to any course because “we need the believing game to help us find flaws in our own thinking” (5). The believing game helps readers examine ideas from the writer’s point of view and seek ways of bettering it so they can understand the text. Professor Elbow’s second idea concerns the doubter, and how this method leads to the development of critical thinking, “the doubting game can reveal flaws or bad logic in arguments that support one position or another” (6). A doubter becomes skeptical of ideas presented to them. They distance themselves from ideas to form a better judgment. One’s critical thinking skills are used in both methods because they try to find any contradictions or additional reasons about why they do or don’t believe the writer’s ideas. Critical thinking in this way is crucial because it will lead to critical readers, reiterating the important role it plays in other

Another reason the course gets neglected is because students feel that taking a writing course when they are hoping to pertain within the field of science, technology, engineering, or mathematics also known as the STEM field isn’t necessary. These STEM programs require intense courses that seem more important to students than a first-year composition requirement is especially if they want to graduate in four years. In addition, university professors David Kaufer and Richard Young state their agreement in “Theory and Practice in the Teaching of Writing: Rethinking the Discipline,” when discussing enrollment in a first-year course makes no difference when they argue, “pretty much the same [language] skills of writing will develop no matter what content is chosen” (80). However, the development of skills the WPA addressed at an earlier stage such as a first-year composition course is more beneficial. Students have more time to enhance their skills, gain new ones, and students in a first-year composition course continuously work on said skills rather than their usage being on and