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Advanced composition is a university-level course in expository writing beyond the first-year or level that is introductory. Also referred to as advanced writing.
“In its broadest sense,” says Gary A. Olson, “advanced composition refers to all postsecondary writing instruction over the first-year level, including courses in technical, business, and advanced expository writing, along with classes connected with writing across the curriculum. This definition that is broad usually the one adopted because of the Journal of Advanced Composition with its early years of publication” (Encyclopedia of English Studies and Language Arts, 1994).
Examples and Observations
- “a beneficial many educators make use of the term advanced composition to refer specifically to a junior- or composition that is senior-level concerned more with writing as a whole than with how writing functions in particular disciplines.
“It is unlikely that compositionists is ever going to reach consensus about advanced composition, nor would most teachers want some kind of monologic, universal method and course. What is certain is that advanced composition continues to grow in popularity, both among students and instructors, and it remains an active part of scholarship.”? (Gary A. Olson, “Advanced Composition.” Encyclopedia of English Studies and Language Arts, ed. by Alan C. Purves. Scholastic Press essay writer, 1994) - “Teaching advanced composition should become more than just a ‘harder’ freshman course. If advanced composition would be to have any viability after all, it must be founded on a theory that (1) shows how advanced composition is significantly diffent in kind from freshman composition and (2) shows how advanced composition is developmentally linked to composition that is freshman. The ‘harder’ approach achieves just the latter.”? (Michael Carter, “What Is Advanced About Advanced Composition?: A Theory of Expertise in Writing.” Landmark Essays on Advanced Composition, ed. by Gary A. Olson and Julie Drew. Lawrence Erlbaum, 1996)
- “Students who enroll in advanced writing courses write with proficiency yet often count on formulas; their prose is full of a lot of words and weighed down with nominalizations, passives, prepositional phrases. Their writing lacks focus, details, and a sense of audience . . .. The aim of an writing that is advanced, therefore, is always to move students from proficiency to effectiveness.”? (Elizabeth Penfield, “Freshman English/Advanced Writing: How Do We Distinguish the Two?” Teaching Advanced Composition: Why andHow , ed. by Katherine H. Adams and John L. Adams. Boynton/Cook, 1991)
Sites of Contention
“My advanced composition courses currently function not merely as ‘skills’ courses but also as sustained inquiries into how functions that are writingand has functioned) politically, socially, and economically on the planet. Through writing, reading, and discussion, my students and I concentrate on three ‘sites of contention’–education, technology, while the self–at which writing assumes particular importance. . . . Although relatively few students elect to write poetry within my current composition that is advanced, this indicates for me that students’ attempts at poetic composition are considerably enriched by their integration into a sustained inquiry regarding how all kinds of writing actually function on earth.”? (Tim Mayers, Rewriting Craft: Composition, Creative Writing, and the Future of English. University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005)
“for the majority of of my first eleven years at Oregon State University–the years during which I taught both first-year and advanced composition–I wrote identical course descriptions for those two composition classes. The structure that is basic of syllabi for the two classes was also similar, as were the assignments. And I also used the text that is same well . . .. Students in advanced composition wrote longer essays than first-year students, but which was the primary difference between the two courses.
“The syllabus for my fall term 1995 advanced composition class . . . Raises issues that are new. The text that follows begins with all the second paragraph for the course overview:
In this class we will discuss questions such as for instance these once we work together to be far better, self-confident, and writers that are self-conscious. As is the scenario with most composition classes, we shall function as a writing workshop–talking in regards to the writing process, working collaboratively on work with progress. But we will also inquire together by what are at stake whenever we write: we’re going to explore, this basically means, the tensions that inevitably result as soon as we want to express our ideas, to claim a place for ourselves, in along with communities which could or may well not share our assumptions and conventions. And we will look at the implications of these explorations for such concepts that are rhetorical voice and ethos.”
(Lisa S. Ede, Situating Composition: Composition Studies together with Politics of Location. Southern Illinois University Press, 2004)