Writing Program

The Writing Program at CSU Pueblo teaches writing as a recursive and frequently collaborative process of invention, drafting, and revising. We believe that writing is a process of making meaning as well as communicating. To that end, the Writing Program classes rely heavily on a workshop format, and classroom instruction emphasizes the connections among writing, reading, and critical thinking.

We believe that the best way to meet the needs of our academic community is by teaching critical literacy, that is, teaching our students to think, read (listen, view, watch, perceive), and write critically. Within this overarching goal are the subordinate goals of:

(1) Preparing students for their reading and writing projects in their other university courses

(2) Preparing them for civic discourse beyond the writing classroom and the university.

Our pursuit of these goals is based on a rhetorical approach to composition and the development of critical literacy, including media and cultural Literacy. If literacy means the ability to read and write functionally, then media literacy and cultural literacy comprise the ability to read critically the range of messages transmitted by all the vehicles of cultural production, particularly the news and entertainment media, and to clearly express, in writing, the results of that critical reading activity.

In practice, writing projects will be based on the real-world genre of civic discourse rather than genre/s manufactured specifically and exclusively for the writing classroom.

We believe that writing, whether academic or public, comes from research, and both academic and civic discourses rely heavily on this principle – albeit in different genres. We believe in sound research techniques, which will be supported by our emphasis on critical reading.