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Advanced composition is a university-level course in expository writing beyond the first-year or introductory level. Also called writing that is advanced.

“with its broadest sense,” says Gary A. Olson, “advanced composition relates to all postsecondary writing instruction above the first-year level, including courses in technical, business, and advanced expository writing, along with classes associated with writing across the curriculum. This definition that is broad the main one adopted by the Journal of Advanced Composition with its early several years of publication” (Encyclopedia of English Studies and Language Arts, 1994).

Examples and Observations

• “A good many educators use the term advanced composition to mention specifically to a junior- or senior-level composition course concerned more with writing in general than with how writing functions in particular disciplines.
  “It is unlikely that compositionists will ever reach consensus about advanced composition, nor would most teachers want some sort of monologic, universal method and course. What is certain is that advanced composition is growing in popularity, both among students and instructors, also it remains an active area of scholarship.”? (Gary A. Olson, “Advanced Composition.” Encyclopedia of English Studies and Language Arts, ed. by Alan C. Purves. Scholastic Press, 1994)
• “Teaching advanced composition should be more than just a ‘harder’ freshman course. If advanced composition will be have any viability at all, it must be founded on a theory that (1) shows how advanced composition differs from the others in kind from freshman composition and (2) shows how advanced composition is developmentally pertaining to freshman composition. The ‘harder’ approach achieves just the latter.”? (Michael Carter, “What Is Advanced About Advanced Composition?: A Theory of Expertise written down.” Landmark Essays on Advanced Composition, ed. by Gary A. Olson and Julie Drew. Lawrence Erlbaum, 1996)

• “Students who enroll in advanced writing courses write with proficiency yet often rely on formulas; their prose is filled with a lot of words and weighed down with nominalizations, passives, prepositional phrases. Their writing lacks focus, details, and a feeling of audience . . .. The goal of an advanced writing course, therefore, is to move students from proficiency to effectiveness.”? (Elizabeth Penfield, “Freshman English/Advanced Writing: Just how can We Distinguish the Two?” Teaching Advanced Composition: Why andHow , ed. by Katherine H. Adams and John L. Adams. Boynton/Cook, 1991)

Sites of Contention

“My advanced composition courses currently function not just as ‘skills’ courses but also as sustained inquiries into how writing functions (and has functioned) politically, socially, and economically in the world. Through writing, reading, and discussion, my students and I concentrate on three ‘sites of contention’–education, technology, therefore the self–at which writing assumes particular importance. . . . Although relatively few students elect to write poetry in my current advanced composition courses, it seems if you ask me that students’ attempts at poetic composition are considerably enriched by their integration into a sustained inquiry on how all sorts of writing actually function in the field.”? (Tim Mayers, Rewriting Craft: Composition, Creative Writing, and the Future of English. University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005)

“for some of my first eleven years at Oregon State University–the years during that we taught both first-year and advanced composition–I wrote identical course descriptions for these two composition classes. The basic structure for the syllabi when it comes to two classes was also similar, as were the assignments. And I used the same text as well how to write a good college paper . . .. Students in advanced composition wrote longer essays than first-year students, but which was the primary distinction between the 2 courses.

“The syllabus for my fall term 1995 advanced composition class . . . raises new issues. The text that follows begins aided by the second paragraph regarding the course overview:

In this class we will discuss questions such as these even as we come together in order to become more efficient, self-confident, and self-conscious writers. As it is the outcome with most composition classes, we shall work as a writing workshop–talking about the writing process, working collaboratively on operate in progress. But we’re going to also inquire together as to what are at stake as soon as we write: we’re going to explore, to phrase it differently, the tensions that inevitably result when we desire to express our ideas, to claim a space for ourselves, in along with communities which could or may not share our assumptions and conventions. And we will consider the implications of these explorations for such concepts that are rhetorical voice and ethos.”

(Lisa S. Ede, Situating Composition: Composition Studies and the Politics of Location. Southern Illinois University Press, 2004)