Arguably, one of the most foundational aspects of devising a syllabus is the description of the goals for the entire course, which will have a cascading effect on everything else, from low-stakes assignments to more complex tasks. However, despite written genres being part of several syllabi, the description of the goals for writing in theatre and performance is usually very succinct, if present at all.

A suggestion for more thoroughly articulating these goals is using the Writing Program Administrators’ outcomes statement as a basis to be adapted for the theatre and performance discipline and course topics. According to this statement, writing goals should likely address at least the following fields and goals for students (italics added):

Rhetorical Knowledge

• Learn and use key rhetorical concepts through analyzing and composing a variety of texts;
• Gain experience reading and composing in several genres to understand how genre conventions shape and are shaped by readers’ and writers’ practices and purposes;
• Develop facility in responding to a variety of situations and contexts calling for purposeful shifts in voice, tone, level of formality, design, medium, and/or structure;
• Understand and use a variety of technologies to address a range of audiences.

Critical Thinking, Reading, and Composing

• Use composing and reading for inquiry, learning, critical thinking, and communicating in various rhetorical contexts;
• Read a diverse range of texts, attending especially to relationships between assertion and evidence, to patterns of organization, to the interplay between verbal and nonverbal elements, and to how these features function for different audiences and situations;
• Locate and evaluate (for credibility, sufficiency, accuracy, timeliness, bias and so on) primary and secondary research materials, including journal articles and essays, books, scholarly and professionally established and maintained databases or archives, and informal electronic networks and internet sources;
• Use strategies–such as interpretation, synthesis, response, critique, and design/redesign–to compose texts that integrate the writer’s ideas with those from appropriate sources.

Processes

• Develop a writing project through multiple drafts;
• Develop flexible strategies for reading, drafting, reviewing, collaborating, revising, rewriting, rereading, and editing;
• Use composing processes and tools as a means to discover and reconsider ideas;
• Experience the collaborative and social aspects of writing processes;
• Learn to give and to act on productive feedback to works in progress;
• Adapt composing processes for a variety of technologies and modalities
• Reflect on the development of composing practices and how those practices influence their work.

Knowledge of Conventions

• Develop knowledge of linguistic structures, including grammar, punctuation, and spelling, through practice in composing and revising;
• Understand why genre conventions for structure, paragraphing, tone, and mechanics vary;
• Gain experience negotiating variations in genre conventions;
• Learn common formats and/or design features for different kinds of texts
• Explore the concepts of intellectual property (such as fair use and copyright) that motivate documentation conventions;
• Practice applying citation conventions systematically in their own work.