Psychology as a “Writing-in-the-Major” Program

As a department, Psychology is a “writing-in-the-major” program (WIMP).  The major purpose behind the program is to insure that any undergraduate who completes the major has experienced sufficient informal and formal writing experiences to be proficient at communicating through a variety of written formats. In psychology, we ask you to learn APA writing style (a formatting style) because it is the convention in the field (and has been adopted by many other fields).  Although formatting is important, writing as a process is more complex and more varied.  Consequently, in all of your psychology courses you will be writing, and, in each class, you may be asked to do a wide variety of different types of writing.  The department sees writing as an extremely important skill and as a mechanism to enhance student learning. Overall, by completing the Psychology major, you will be completing the “writing emphasis” component of your general education requirements.

 

Below we address types of writing and some of the key objectives of the program.

 

The WIMP program helps us differentiate between types of writing. 

1.      Types of formal writing:

a.      Academic writing (students demonstrate their knowledge about a specific subject. It is prompted by instructor questions to describe, explain, discuss, analyze, evaluate (and so forth) and is written for the teacher as the sole audience for the work. Many types of reports and papers fall into this category: essay exams, short answers on exams, research projects, book reports, papers that analyze or critique a specific topic, issue or problem, etc.

b.      Scholarly writing. This includes all the types of writing a working scholar might do. The purpose of such writing is to communicate about the ideas, theories, inquiry methods, and research findings of the discipline in the style of the discipline.  Types of scholarly writing include journal articles, grant proposals, laboratory reports, field study reports, critical reviews, and scholarly essays.

c.      Professional workplace writing. This includes the writing in which a working professional might engage. Some examples of workplace writing include program proposals, business letters, interoffice memos, reports to co-workers, feasibility studies, program assessments and evaluations, and many different types of writing for lay audiences, such as brochures, pamphlets, guides, instruction sheets, etc.

2. Writing-To-Learn. The term "writing-to-learn" refers to informal writing activities intended primarily to facilitate or develop students' understanding and thinking.  They can be graded or ungraded – very short or longer.  In addition, they are fundamental to helping students write/think in ways that contribute to good formal writing.  If, for instance, an instructor has you write your responses to a video, it is giving you a chance to think about the video and process its information in a way that is meaningful to you.

 

Key objectives behind the WIMP program.

1. Clearly defined goals, outcomes and standards for student writing.

2. Faculty respond to your writing with a standard criteria for assessing the quality of students' formal writing.  Click on this LINK to view an assessment rubric your psychology faculty may be using. [insert]

3. Effective writing processes throughout the major. 

4. Integration of writing-to-learn throughout the major. 

5. Development of mindful writers. 

Feel free to ask your instructors about the WIMP program if you have questions.