In the third year, most students take a course in writing across the curriculum, taught in most cases by a member of the English department but based on the student's own discipline. This course trains students in expository and persuasive writing for a general audience. The fourth course, a university requirement, is a class in a specific subject with a heavy writing component, taught by faculty in the student's major or career area. Even this brief discussion demonstrates that the problem of audience is central to writing across the curriculum. The problem, of course, is the scarcity of faculty members who are expert both in the teaching of writing and in another field.
Students turn in work to both a writing specialist and a professor in the specific field.
Students use writing not merely to show what's been learned but to learn. Though this concept is well founded in research as well as in common sense, it is not universally recognized, and as we enlighten our students we may also remind our colleagues in other fields of the complexity and importance of what we do as writing instructors. Adjunct courses encourage students to see writing as a process of discovery and creation rather than as the tedious chore of packaging inert knowledge in the appropriate way. Over the last five years, the UCLA Writing Programs has developed an ambitious adjunct program that now offers writing courses in history, sociology, geography, computer science, English, folklore, kinesiology, economics, chemistry, political science, and other disciplines. Because we have many instructors, we rarely have to call on someone wholly inexperienced.