A Middle Way for WAC: Writing to Engage

Abstract

Writing across the curriculum (WAC) activities and assignments have typically been characterized as fitting into one of two categories: writing to learn (WTL) or writing in the disciplines (WID, sometimes referred to as “writing to communicate”). This article suggests that WTL and WID are better viewed as the ends of a spectrum of WAC activities and assignments. Between WTL and WID, a third set of activities and assignments, writingto-engage (WTE), offers a promising means of extending the critical thinking involved in WTL, engaging students in critical thinking about disciplinary knowledge and processes, and laying additional groundwork for writing to communicate within a discipline or profession. Drawing on Bloom’s taxonomy of cognitive skills as modified by Anderson and Krathwohl (2001), this article argues that WTE activities and assignments offer additional precision and nuance for understanding how writing can be used to support learning in courses that employ WAC pedagogies.