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Bizzell Memorial Library in front of a blue sky, with a lamppost with OU flag and trees in the foregound.

About Expository Writing

Expository Writing Program Mission Statement

The Expository Writing Program offers undergraduates small, topic-based, seminar-style writing courses led by experienced lecturers with a passion for teaching writing, sharing their knowledge about the topic, and encouraging student intellectual curiosity and exploration. Engaging classroom discussions, challenging and creative writing and other assignments, and conferences over each major assignment are hallmarks of this program in which students will further develop their university-level analytical reading, thinking, and writing skills.

In particular, we design and teach our courses with the following five goals in mind.

Help students understand reading and writing as an ongoing conversation energized by diverse perspectives, how to read for these conversations, and how to add their voices to these conversations in class discussions, class collaborations, and writing assignments, so they can anticipate readerly reactions to their writing and can provide readerly feedback to fellow writers. 


Introduce students to the idea that writing is a recursive process and encourage them to practice the stages of the writing process from inquiry, brainstorming, and invention through the reciprocal stages of drafting and revision, with editing and proofreading occurring near the end of the process. Aid students in identifying and developing a version of the writing process that works best for them as thinkers, researchers, and writers. 


Help students recognize the significance of lived experience and cultural background, position/positionality, as part of encouraging self-expression, including finding an individual voice, stance, and writing style. Assist them in recognizing the positions (stances) that result from diverse perspectives in the texts they engage with in class and in independent research. Help them understand the connection between multimodality and authentic expression as they translate the skills and writing strategies they have practiced in more traditional writing assignments into multimodal formats, and help them recognize the intersection of writing skills used in written texts with those used in multimodal forms. In addition, familiarize students with approaches such as Universal Design that foster audience engagement.


Help students understand the value of curiosity, questioning, and exploration in research and writing processes to foster inquiry-related approaches that stimulate critical reading and thinking in order to better comprehend course themes and texts, guide academic research, identify arguments from sources, and understand and practice using different argument strategies in their writing. When students are invited to practice reading, annotating, and thinking critically and rhetorically about texts and identify arguments and rhetorical moves in texts, they better see how to practice argument and rhetorical strategies in their own writing.


Help students develop an awareness of how audience, purpose, and genre conventions condition the meaning and reception of writing. Understand how variations in writing structure, style, and citation across disciplines reflect the values, methods, and ways of knowing in these fields of study.


Commitment to Culturally Responsive and Inclusive Pedagogy

The Expository Writing Program fosters students’ growth and development as writers. The program is committed to providing outstanding writing instruction to students at the University of Oklahoma and responding to their evolving needs, interests, and identities. The program’s individually-designed courses draw on faculty expertise and are informed by the program’s Goals and Outcomes and by its commitment to culturally responsive and inclusive pedagogy.

The Expository Writing Program fulfills its commitment to culturally responsive and inclusive pedagogy by:

  • developing and revising courses responsive to student needs, experiences, and identities. 

  • valorizing multiple forms of expression, including multimodal, oral, and narrative compositions. 

  • respecting the history and significance of cultural rhetorics and the validity of student voice. 

  • acknowledging the historical and contemporary biases against the literacy practices of students of color, poor and working class students, disabled students, queer students, and students from other minoritized backgrounds 

  • mitigating these biases through inclusive classroom instruction and materials, proactive grading practices, and incorporation universal design for learning (UDL) principles.

  • conducting ongoing evaluations and assessments of our program, faculty, and courses. 


Program History

Based on the Expos Program at Harvard University, the Expository Writing Program at the University of Oklahoma was established in 2004. Since then, it has offered hundreds of topic-based, seminar-style writing courses in a variety of fields including literature, music, gender studies, area studies, science, politics, and others. Notable, it has had 4 courses selected as Dream Courses. While many of the Elements of Expository Writing as outlined by Gordon Harvey remain core to its pedagogy, it has evolved to include culturally responsive and inclusive pedagogy as outlined above as well as contemporary approaches to academic writing and communication, including multimodal and interactive texts such as blogs and websites. Its faculty members have always played an integral part in OU and Norman community life; current faculty members direct, codirect, or are involved with the following: Write Club, Carceral Studies Consortium, Oklahoma Prison Writers and Artists Foundation, Mark Allen Everett Poetry Series, Warrior Scholar Project, OU Green Zone, and the Pat Tillman Scholarship Committee.