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>But what is a writing curriculum? Is the only way to teach writing to >have separate courses in writing? I have trouble with this precisely >because most such courses are "contentless". At the same time, as >someone in the thick of WID, I wish for more. I'd like to see a real >writing course for my students, at the third year or so, in which they >can focus on content as well as their communication. Our first such >experiment in this begins next term. I'll keep you posted as to whether >it makes a difference. I agree whole heartedly that lack of content is a problem. Though rhetoric and comp evolve out of a three thousand year old tradition, and you could teach that tradition as content it can be too meta-rhetorical for a lot of undergrads. In my experience teaching composition, those courses with a given content such as the more senior technical and business writing courses are really teachable and productive. Freshman comp on the other hand seems plagued by the lack of content; even when the course revolves around a theme, the students perceive it as somehow fake or staged. I think the perfect first year writing course would be a writing intensive lit course. A lot of American students miss the opportunity to take a lit class because it's not required (is replaced by comp) and that is really a shame. I've also had success teaching a second year "baby lit crit" class with an emphasis on criticism as a rhetorical act. Though it's a challenge to combine literature, criticism, and rhetoric, I think its potentially fruitful. (It helps to demystify the critical writing process so we don't just continue to reward the initiated and marginalize the uninitiated.) An ideal *Canadian* writing course could evolve out of required lit classes in fact. This is, perhaps, a uniquely Canadian opportunity since the evolution of rheotirc and comp in the US has led to a pretty serious schism (in many institutions) between the lit and rhet camps. As I recall it was the old Oxford ideal of *writing as thinking* that was partly responsible for the rise of the modern day lit class as a replacement for the traditional rhetoric course, except that the Oxford model involved individual attention to student writing in a dialogic relationship with the tutor. A contemporary version of this would be ideal in my mind--a writing intensive lit course taught to a class of 24, say, with plenty of opportunity for rhetorical instruction, peer review, and one on one student/teacher dialogue over work in progress.