Required of all students during their freshman year, Academic Writing is the first of a series of writing courses that, together with the Writing Center and other program resources, comprise the Writing Program at Syracuse University.

Each section of WRT 105 is a community of writers who meet together with the specific purpose of developing as critical readers, writers, and thinkers. Students learn strategies of critical academic writing in various genres, including analysis, argument, and researched writing. Students learn to develop ideas through the choices they make as writers, from invention to making and supporting claims, to sentence-level editing, to designing finished print and digital texts.

The course challenges students to understand that effective communication requires people to be aware of the complex factors that shape every rhetorical context, including issues of power, history, difference, and community.

Students explore the histories and knowledges that shape the positions from which they write and that inform the perspectives of various audiences, and they learn to recognize that writing as a true communicative act may potentially change the perspectives of both the writer and audiences. Developing this understanding helps students perceive ways in which their work as writers extends beyond the immediate requirements of the classroom and prepares them for effective engagement with issues in the workplace, local community, and global society. The writing course is a site of active learning where students have responsibility for their own progress and for that of their peers.

The course is organized into three units, in which students engage in various activities that culminate in a formal paper for each unit and a writing portfolio.

  • Open to qualified high school seniors only.
  • SU’s class cap policy is 20 students maximum per session.

Please read this memo regarding recommended sequencing for WRT and ETS courses