Faith Mellenthin

I see many benefits to the skills that writing provides and agree that requiring at least one upper level writing course could be beneficial to all majors.

The general education courses have been reconfigured, and students are required to take fewer courses than before. With this in mind, I think that adding an extra writing requirement wouldn’t be too much to ask. The current English courses needed to graduate teach the basic skills of writing, along with essay and reading analysis. By mixing these topics, students focus mostly on reading, and there is not much room to improve writing skills. A separate class to focus on these would actually help teach writing components more effectively.

I know that not all majors directly need writing skills; however, the process of writing thoughts down allows for better communication. Similarly, writing will help with resume building and paperwork skills which we will all encounter. I think that at the very least, more emphasis should be placed on writing skills during English classes to allow for people to practice this craft.

Kaylyn Zielinski

While it might be a good thing for some students to better their writing, it shouldn’t be a requirement to graduate.

Fields of study that have a high amount of writing in their future already have courses for students that involve writing. Usually students pick their major based on what they enjoy and would enjoy doing for the rest of their lives. If they decided to take a path that doesn’t require as much writing, they shouldn’t have to take upper-division writing courses.

If the university feels like an upper-level writing course is necessary for students, it should have professors implement more writing in the electives students choose for their majors or minors instead of creating a separate course just for writing. There are plenty of students who don’t know how to make/follow a budget, how to write a check, or even how to establish a good credit score, but there’s no required course teaching that.

Some degree of writing is necessary in almost every career, but I’m not sure what students could be taught about writing that couldn’t be covered in high school, in the basic writing courses that are already required, or in the courses designed to prepare them for a career in the path they chose.

Kara Mercer

Students should be required to take more writing courses.

Communication is extremely important for everyday life, and the ability to write is a skill that employers will look for when hiring.

Writing courses that focus on topics applicable to specific majors will be a good use of students’ time.

While writing is an important skill, if a student were majoring in business, a literary analysis would not be beneficial for that student. If the requirement for upper-level writing courses were implemented, teachers would need to cater the courses to skill sets needed in a student’s future line of work. The whole point of college is to focus on a future career.

Writing effectively can also help in other areas of communication.

My upper-level writing courses taught me how to pick out key elements of a topic and communicate them verbally to an audience. I have a class where I sometimes need to read my ideas out loud for my peers. Reading out loud helps me get used to speaking in front of others and write in a way that’s understandable.

Writing is not everyone’s cup of tea, but I believe knowing how to write is definitely a skill that will go a long way and that everyone would benefit from.

Abby Zaccaria

Students already take enough writing courses.

Lower-level writing courses, which include ENGL 103, ENGL 104 and COMS 100, are part of general education requirements. These courses should be enough to give students a basic background in writing and get them through their majors.

A Progressive Learning in Undergraduate Studies (PLUS) task force suggests that NIU adds some upper-division writing courses to students’ graduation requirements as well. I think this would be a bad idea because students are already required to take three courses that have a lot of writing in them.

Another reason upper-division writing classes should not be added to graduation requirements is that these courses may distract students with majors that don’t involve writing from their more relevant course work. Students need to be able to focus on classes and work that will help them go into their chosen field after graduation.

Adding upper-level writing classes to NIU’s general education requirements would probably hinder students more than it would help them.