Expository writing is covered in greater depth in Advanced Composition, which is a subject taken at the university level that goes beyond the first-year or introductory level. Additionally known as advanced penmanship.
According to Gary A. Olson, “in its broadest sense,” Advanced Composition Course refers to all postsecondary writing instruction that occurs after the first-year level. This includes classes in technical, business, and advanced expository writing, in addition to classes associated with writing across the curriculum. This expansive definition was the one that was adopted by the Journal of Advanced Composition in its early years of publication.
Some Illustrative Examples and Remarks
“A significant number of educators use the word Advanced Composition to refer specifically to a composition course taken in the junior or senior year of high school that is concerned more with writing in general than with how writing functions in specific disciplines…
“It is extremely unlikely that compositionists will ever achieve a consensus about Advanced Composition Course, and the vast majority of educators would be opposed to some kind of monologic, universal method and course. One thing that can be said for certain is that advanced composition is still a very active field of research, despite the fact that its popularity among students and teachers of the subject is only increasing.
“[T]eaching advanced composition should involve more than simply offering a ‘harder' version of the standard course for first-year students. If Advanced Composition Course is going to have any kind of viability at all, it needs to be based on a theory that (1) demonstrates how advanced composition is qualitatively distinct from freshman composition and (2) demonstrates how advanced composition is developmentally connected to freshman composition. Only then will advanced composition have any kind of chance of succeeding. The “harder” strategy is only successful in achieving the latter.”
“Students who enroll in advanced writing classes are capable writers but frequently depend on formulas; their prose is stuffed with an excessive number of words and is burdened with nominalizations, passives, and prepositional phrases. Their writing is unfocused, vague, and devoid of any awareness of its intended readership. Therefore, moving students from a proficient level of writing to a successful level of writing is the objective of an advanced writing course.
Locations of Armed Conflict
“At the moment, the Advanced Composition Course classes that I teach serve not only as “skills” classes but also as ongoing investigations into the ways in which writing functions (and has functioned) strategically, socially, and economically in the wider world. My students and I concentrate on three “sites of contention” through writing, reading, and discussion: education, technology, and the self. At each of these “sites of contention,” the importance of writing becomes especially prominent. …Even though only a small percentage of students in my current advanced composition classes choose to write poetry, it seems to me that the students' attempts at poetic composition are significantly enriched when they are integrated into an ongoing investigation about how different types of writing actually function in the real world.
Explorations
“For the majority of my first eleven years at [Oregon State University], the years during which I taught both first-year and advanced composition, I wrote identical course descriptions for these two composition courses. During those years, I also taught both first-year and Advanced Composition Course. Both of the courses' curricula shared a fundamental framework, and the assignments were organized in a comparable fashion. In addition, I utilized the exact same wording. The students who took advanced composition composed essays that were significantly longer than those who took first-year composition, but that was the only significant difference between the two classes.
