How Can I Prepare for the
WPE?
The WPE is one way to meet the Graduation Writing Requirement. The two hour essay exam takes place on a Saturday early in the quarter Fall, Winter, and Spring quarters only. Students who have completed 90 units take the exam to ensure proficiency in written communication, analytical and critical thinking skills. Students respond to a prompt based on a 300-500 word reading passage. Students are asked to summarize the writer's position and then asked to argue for a position of their own, clearly showing readers how s/he thinks. For the most part, the question will ask for some of the following: summarization, description, definition, comparison/contrast, analysis, argument, etc. All students receive the same question. No dictionaries are allowed. Essays are expected to be at least 500 words (3-4 written pages). Students are evaluated on the essay's organization, development, and expression.
Here is a sample reading
passage followed by a writing prompt:
It wasn't supposed to be this way. We were told to expect medium-rare filet mignon and exotic fondues. These I was promised. Knifing through the jet stream at 50,000 feet, I would put up my stockinged feet, take my good wife's gloved hand, beam at our Cleaver-perfect children across the wide aisle and doze as we rocketed safely into our future at 600 miles per hour. This is what we were sold. The new magic carpet for the new American leisure class.
Forty years later, we receive instead a $1,200 coach seat half the width of a human pelvis, a mismatched pair of circus peanuts and the in-flight director's recut of "Bicentennial Man." Behold, air rage. This has been the season of discontent for enraged passengers and the various carriers who brand, herd and ship them from point to point.
There is blame to be laid everywhere, of course. Overcrowding lies at the root of most in-flight incivility: more people going more places means more people in line, more people at the gate, more people trying to lever their washer-dryer combos into the overhead bin while more people trapped in the aisle behind them hiss obscenities. More missed connections, more friction, more heat, more anger. We love our easily cataloged two-syllable catch phrases like "road rage" and "air rage," and we lump them together even though they have nearly opposite causes. In the former case, people go crazy with the illusion of vehicular control; in the latter, they're driven crazy because they have no control at all.
The entire system is "maxed out," say the experts. Why? Didn't the Government or you airlines see this coming? Once you deregulate and start offering discount fares, how can you feign surprise when we all show up?
Their smiling commercials and ads neglect to mention certain things. No mention in the fine print of supercilious [demanding; disdainful] flying waitresses or hostile counter clerks or belligerent, drunken seatmates or the complex nature of the hostage-kidnapper relationship that begins once the airplane door closes. To say nothing of the subminiature dinners and the fictional timetables and the arcane calculus whereby your seat always costs $700 more than the one next to it.
But we, the traveling public, are culpable, too. We are still a nation of suckers after all, trapped in the feedback loop of the advertising cycle, forever consuming goods and services in the half-witted belief that the new soap or the new soup or the aisle seat on the exit row will deliver not only scads of lather, beefy goodness and an on-time arrival rate of 98 percent, but a slimmer, sexier, more fully self-actualized identity as well. The worm at the core of it all, as always with humanity, is want. We want what we were promised-we want the transcendent fantasy world technology keeps failing to deliver.
We are boorish, childish passengers with outrageous expectations, self-important, ill behaved, underdressed, over packed and sublimely oblivious to the fact that a jumbo jet was never intended as a high-altitude dinner theatre.
And while you're all going no place special in such a hurry, try to remember that what you're really trapped in is your own perceptions, and that your anger comes from the common American convictions that the laws of physics and the rules of commerce and their consequent indignities apply to everyone but you. So, don't drink so much when you fly, take your elbow off my armrest and cover your mouth when you cough! Because only by recognizing your flaws can I ever hope to overcome them.
How Can I Prepare for the
WPE?
The Writing Lab provides several resources for WPE preparation. There are sample questions and essays, descriptions of the scoring guide, and tutors there who can help you practice your writing ahead of time. Also, every quarter the lab holds WPE WORKSHOPS during the the two weeks before the exam. These two hour workshops dispense valuable information about the exam itself, scoring, questions etc. Workshop administrators review passing and failing essays on an overhead. They also provide brainstorming techniques and tips for writing the essay. Students who attend these workshops feel more relaxed when facing the actual exam! However, the best way to prepare for the WPE is to practice writing as often as you can!
Writing Lab Hours
There are three ways to fulfill it:
By passing the WPE ($25
fee/not offered summer quarter)
By passing a GWR-approved
upper-division course with a grade of C or better and certification
of writing proficiency based on a 500-word in-class essay. Select from
the following non-GE writing courses: English 301, 302, 310, 317, 318,
326; or from these GE C4 literature courses: 330,
331, 332, 333, 334, 335, 339, 340, 341, 342, 343, 345, 346, 347, 349, 350,
351, 352, 354, 370, 371, 372,
380 or 381. Check your catalog to see which courses also meet USCP
requirements as well. Visit the GE Web
Site to see which classes are being offered for the current quarter. GWR
certification
is NOT available through London Study courses.
By presenting
to the Writing Skills Office evidence of completion of an equivalent
upper-divisiion, university-wide writing requirement at another CSU
campus. Previous certification is valid only if it has been awarded
within seven years of your Cal Poly matriculation.
NOTE: You can also arrange with the Writing Skills Office to take Cal
Poly's exam at another college or university if you have not completed the
requirement while in residence.
Complete a Space Reservation Form at the Cashier's Office in the Administration Building. The fee for the test is $25.00.
Students with disabilities who have been authorized to receive alternate testing accommodations through the Disability Resource Center (DRC) may also request accommodations for the WPE. These students should first sign up at the DRC, where they will receive the WPE informational flyer, then pay the $25 exam fee at the University Cashier's Office at least one week before the exam.
For more information contact:
Return to Writing Lab Directory