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The First-Year Writing Seminar

The First-Year Writing Seminar (FYWS) introduces students to critical reading and persuasive writing at Vassar and helps them transition to college-level writing. These courses from across Vassar’s curriculum challenge students to enter sophisticated conversations by asserting compelling claims and supporting those claims through an organized presentation of evidence. Each First-Year Writing Seminar is built around a rich topic, giving students a complex set of readings, questions, and debates to consider as they learn to engage with the ideas of others and articulate their positions.

These resources offer faculty practical models for achieving the FYWS Learning Outcomes. They are meant to help you develop your student’s ability to write for an academic audience while fostering among us a sense of shared purpose.

Please contact Matthew Schultz, Director of First-Year Writing & The Writing Center and Adjunct Associate Professor of English, with any questions. He is available to meet individually with FYWS faculty to help plan or offer feedback on course design, writing assignments, and teaching strategies.

First-Year Writing Seminar Faculty Resource Handbook—Vassar Login Required

Learning Outcomes

  1. Formulating Arguments: Students participate in a scholarly conversation by crafting a paper with a clear, well-organized argument and establishing its relevance to the intended audience.
  2. Marshaling Evidence: Students identify, evaluate, and accurately represent an understanding of primary and secondary source materials (eg. summary, paraphrase, quotation) and show the relevance of those materials to their own arguments.
  3. Writing Process: Students engage in various strategies for using writing to analyze and develop their ideas (faculty conferences, peer-reviewing, Writing Center consultation, and revising).
  4. Academic Integrity: Students distinguish between plagiarism and the responsible use of sources and cite according to disciplinary conventions.
  5. Mechanics and Usage: Students formulate their ideas in clear and cogent prose while adhering to rules of grammatical correctness.

Course Design Guidelines

  • Enrollment in each First-Year Writing Seminar is limited to seventeen students.
  • Course readings and materials will vary by discipline, but in all cases should act as springboards to writing and discussion.
  • Some classroom time should be devoted to explicit discussion of the elements of writing, such as developing theses, incorporating evidence, and creating strong introductions, summaries, descriptions, paraphrases, etc. (The elements of a paper will vary across disciplines, and can/should play to the strengths of the professor and idiosyncratic parameters of each course.)
  • Each course should in some way require the use of the library or consultation with a librarian for the purposes of seeking out and evaluating relevant materials beyond the assigned class texts. Please consult with your subject-area liaison.
  • Instructors are responsible for educating students on disciplinary forms of citation and attribution, and acquainting them with the publication Originality and Attribution: A Guide for Student Writers at Vassar College, available at the Dean of Studies Office.
  • Assignments should occur frequently and vary in length and format, enabling instructors to assess students’ strengths on a regular basis. Students in a First-Year Writing Seminar should expect to submit 25 to 30 pages of writing over the course of the semester.
  • Instructors are strongly encouraged to incorporate revision into their assignments and should require students to revise at least one paper, with close attention to making significant, not superficial, adjustments.
  • Instructors should require one individual conference per student per semester and should strongly encourage at least one more conference per student per semester. Instructors may decide to replace one or even two class meeting times with individual conference times. If a student misses a required conference, they should be marked absent, and their grade should change accordingly.

Further Recommendations

  • In-class peer review: Some form of student-to-student work has proven very effective at this level. Students can work with partners in the classroom to facilitate careful reading and/or collaborative “editing” of papers. “Workshops” vary in form, and students and professors can choose among them; they offer students an opportunity to practice revision.
  • The Writing Center: Instructors should encourage students of all skill levels and abilities to work with a peer consultant in the Writing Center. To make an appointment, students should visit WCOnline.
  • Effective speaking: Instructors are strongly encouraged to give students guidance in developing effective speaking and discussion skills. This includes offering their own ideas and listening and responding in class to the ideas of others. It may also include more formal practice, such as preparing and making an oral presentation.