What we have in the range of assignments are five different types of writing. And I think it's important to recognize, if you're doing a writing-intensive course, that there is writing for specific purposes, that there are different styles of writing and each one is valuable. Letter-writing, I know, is probably something that people don't think about doing in class as being an effective way of teaching content or actually you spend time teaching with. But when you think about it, letter-writing will probably be the main form of writing that most people are going to be doing. And if they can craft good letters and make persuasive arguments in their letters, good for them because then their letters will be taken seriously by people that matter.
Writing is a means of mastering, to practice in mastering the content of the course.
It doesn't apply to anything else but multiple-choice tests at the end of the semester. Basically you are spending the whole semester learning material in order to take a test, whereas if you teach a writing course, what you're teaching, or what you're giving the students, is the ability to go out of the classroom with a tool writing. You have to have the facts. So I think that's the point. The point is to get the students to apply what they learn.