The College
Writing Requirement
Minimum Expectation
Learning to write well is a developmental process that occurs over time. For this reason, all Brown undergraduates must work on their writing with intention and focus at least twice during their undergraduate studies.
The Writing Requirement at Brown requires students to take at least one writing-designated (WRIT in Courses@Brown) course or any English, Literary Arts, or Comparative Literature course in semesters 1-4 as well as at least one additional qualifying writing course in semesters 5-7.
Assessment Criteria
You are required to demonstrate that you have worked on your writing across your four years at Brown. The following criteria will help you assess competence and guide you in developing your writing skills.
- Highly competent writers:
- Create coherent and well-developed responses to assignments
- Demonstrate a high level of critical and abstract thinking
- Demonstrate a sophisticated appreciation for readers’ needs
- Support their arguments with relevant, detailed and convincing evidence
- Logically sequence their paragraphs with content-based transitions
- Use appropriate diction and tone and constructively vary sentence structures
- Use correct grammar, punctuation, spelling and syntax
- Competent writers:
- Exhibit moderate ability to think critically and abstractly in response to assignments
- Clearly attempt to address intended readers’ needs
- Sufficiently organize and develop their ideas so as not to impair the readers’ understanding
- Use loosely or unclearly related examples
- Sometimes use weak transitions between paragraphs
- Depend upon basic sentence structures, phrasing and usage
- Occasionally use incorrect grammar, punctuation, spelling and syntax, but not to the point where errors impair the reader’s understanding of the text
- Writers whose work falls below the level of competence typically:
- Exhibit little or no ability to think critically or abstractly
- Fail to recognize the needs of the reader
- Fail to answer the questions asked in assignments
- Depend upon weak generalizations and undeveloped examples
- Fail to write coherent prose
- Use imprecise or inappropriate vocabulary
- Fail to demonstrate sufficient understanding of grammar, punctuation and syntax.
Available Courses
As a student at Brown, you are expected to work on your writing in your general studies and in your concentration. To that end, Brown offers a number of courses that will help you develop your writing abilities. You are encouraged to take at least one of these courses in your first year of study and at least one additional writing course in your area of concentration.
Writing-designated courses provide you with feedback about your writing and opportunities to apply that feedback on the same assignment or when completing writing assignments later in the course.
The Nonfiction Writing Program in Brown's English Department offers a number of intensive writing courses that will help you develop your abilities to write academic essays, journalism and creative nonfiction.
In Writing Fellows courses, you will improve your written communication skills through intensive work with another Brown student, called a Writing Fellow, who has been trained in composition and pedagogy.