Writing Plan Phases
Collecting Baseline Data
First Edition Writing Plan
Second Edition Writing Plan
Third Edition Writing Plan
Legacy Writing Plan
  • phase completed
  • phase in-progress

Spanish & Portuguese Studies (SPPT), the largest of the College of Liberal Arts’s language departments, enrolls approximately 160 students in its two majors, Spanish Studies and Spanish & Portuguese Studies. Departmental instructors also provide language instruction to hundreds of non-majors each year. To accommodate these two distinct student populations, the department’s 14 faculty members are joined by roughly 25 Professional and Academic (P/A) Staff and 35 Graduate Instructors (GIs), who teach many of the Spanish and Portuguese language and upper-division courses. Spanish & Portuguese Studies also houses its own writing center, where students taking 3000-level courses can receive face-to-face and online writing support.

Spanish and Portuguese Studies Writing Plan

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Writing in Spanish & Portuguese Studies

The SPPT faculty generated the following list in response to the question, “What characterizes academic and professional communication in this discipline?”

  • Critical (interpretive and evaluative of others’ works and ideas)
  • Creative (adding original perspective to existing body of knowledge)
  • Argumentative (positioned to persuade others)
  • Thesis driven (focused on evidencing one or more key arguments)
  • Scientific (following the scientific method)
  • Analytic (emphasizing the logical examination of subjects)
  • Descriptive (conveying data)
  • Interpretive (advancing specific readings of objects using evidence)
  • Attuned to historical, social, and political context
  • Situated within awareness of major historic and contemporary global networks of power
  • Supported by abstract or theoretical reasoning

Writing Abilities Expected of Spanish & Portuguese Majors

The SPPT faculty generated the following list in response to the question, “With which writing abilities should students in this unit’s major(s) graduate?”

After four semesters of language instruction, students will have received appropriate instruction and been provided the opportunity to:

  • Express personally relevant information to meet a variety of practical needs (relate experiences, express opinions and preferences, make requests)
  • Communicate about non-personal topics at the paragraph level
  • Demonstrate control of basic grammatical structures and verb forms and use of a variety of vocabulary
  • Link sentences into coherent paragraphs in 250–500 word compositions
  • Develop a thesis and support it with evidence
  • Provide content-focused peer response
  • Recognize and produce different modes of discourse: opinion, description, synthesis, compare/contrast

Upon graduation, SPPT majors should be able to:

  • Write a research paper (develop a research question, design bibliography, revise first draft)
  • Develop an interpretation of a cultural, literary, or linguistic object of study
  • Adopt a critical and analytical, not personal or expository, position
  • Identify appropriate primary and secondary sources for literary, cultural, or linguistic research
  • Provide concrete examples to support interpretation 
  • Smoothly integrate textual evidence from sources to support interpretation
  • Synthesize existing critical readings on an object of study
  • Identify and use rhetorical organization appropriate to the discipline
  • Apply correct grammar, spelling & mechanics appropriate for advanced academic discourse
  • Use vocabulary appropriate for cultural, literary, or linguistic analysis
  • Cite and use bibliography following appropriate MLA, APA, or LSA guidelines

Menu of Grading Criteria Used in Spanish & Portuguese Studies Courses

For beginning and intermediate language courses:

  1. Expresses personally relevant information to meet practical needs
  2. Accurately uses grammatical structures and verb tenses appropriate to level
  3. Communicates about non-personal topics at the paragraph level
  4. Employs logical structure
  5. Develops an interpretation with supporting evidence
  6. Recognizes and uses appropriately main modes of discourse: description, opinion, analysis, synthesis, compare/contrast

For upper-division courses:

  1. Develops a research question
  2. Revises first draft for content and language
  3. Develops an interpretation of a cultural, literary, or linguistic object of study
  4. Adopts a critical and analytical, not personal or expository, position
  5. Identifies appropriate primary and secondary sources for literary, cultural, or linguistic research
  6. Provides concrete examples to support interpretation
  7. Smoothly integrates textual evidence from sources to support interpretation
  8. Synthesizes existing critical readings on object of study
  9. Identifies and uses rhetorical organization appropriate to the discipline
  10. Applies correct grammar, spelling & mechanics appropriate for advanced academic discourse
  11. Uses vocabulary appropriate for cultural, literary, or linguistic analysis
  12. Cites bibliography following MLA, APA, or LSA guidelines

Highlights from the Writing Plan

In developing their first two Writing Plans, faculty members and instructors in Spanish & Portuguese determined that the most critical task they faced involved gaining clearer understanding of the ways writing instruction was being included across their curricula. Early discussions also focused on using an online instructional tool, Cuaderno, to assess student writing using the writing abilities articulated in the Writing Plan. Presentations focusing on WEC and Cuaderno were provided by four members of the faculty and instructional staff (Emilce Lopez, Joanna O’Connell, Frances Matos-Schultz, and Susan Villar) at the 2009 Symposium on Second Language Writing at Arizona State University. The second Writing Plan, approved in Spring 2014, collected and assessed randomized student writing samples from core courses to pinpoint the desired writing abilities students struggle with the most. Results from these ratings were analyzed together with writing prompts and syllabi collected from every instructor. This Plan also initiated a longitudinal study of department majors, which collects every piece of formal writing participants complete for their major.

SPPT’s third-edition Writing Plan, approved in Spring 2017, focuses on sustaining the unit’s WEC efforts through an ongoing forum, Workshops on Writing (WOW), featuring presentations, discussions, and planning meetings each semester related to the role of writing and critical analysis. In Spring 2018, SPPT will conclude its longitudinal study of student writing, geared toward composing a cumulative portrait of the progression of writing abilities between SPAN 3015 (Spanish Compositions and Communication) and SPAN 3972W (Senior Project).