摘要：writing across the curriculum linkages are generally acknowledged to help students
improve as writers and engage more deeply in disciplinary course content. However, the
extent to which the literacy skills that are taught in general writing courses transfer to
the specific writing needs of a particular discipline remains a debatable issue. Referring
to first year writing courses, Amy Devitt notes that writing courses “have been attacked
as not useful, in part because of a potential lack of transferability of the general writing
skills learned in composition courses to the particular writing tasks students will later
confront” (202). Margaret Mansfield similarly maintains that attempts to reproduce
real world writing in the classroom are “intrinsically doomed” (69), as do many of the
essays in Joseph Petraglia’s 1995 collection, Reconceiving Writing, Rethinking Writing
Instruction, which question the value of what Petraglia terms GWSI (General Writing
Skills Instruction). However, an important benefit of a cross curricular model, one
that receives little attention in writing across the curriculum scholarship, is that linked
courses not only help students improve as writers, but they can also enable students to
understand that “when people learn, they don’t take on new knowledge so much as a
new identity” (Lindquist 267). Identity is closely linked with writing, but WAC tends
to focus primarily on the actual writing, not on the role writers play in a discourse
community.
