Designing Writing Assignments

Presented below are key features that are typically included in successful writing assignments.

The Purpose/Task of the Writing Assignment

When professors give writing assignments, many students think to themselves, "Well, what do I have to do?" To answer this fundamental question, a writing assignment should make its rhetorical purpose/s and goals clear.

Provided are some rhetorical purposes and components of academic literacy that professors highlight in their writing assignment guidelines:

• To Inform
• To Persuade
• To Analyze
• To Reflect
• To Express
• To Summarize
• To Argue
• To Research Primary and Secondary Sources
• To Work with Sources Effectively and Ethically
• To Respond to Readings
• To Explore Personal Experience Related to the Topic or Reading
• To Connect Discipline-Specific Concepts to Contemporary Issues and Arguments

Role and Audience

In some cases, professors have students write for authentic audiences, readers who have some form of power in the community, the university, or an organization. In fact, some writing assignments can be "client-based," meaning that the main audience is a client that the student writes for, with mentoring from the faculty member.

If authentic audiences or clients are not an option in a course, then asking students to write from “positions of power” to someone who knows less about the topic than they do, someone who is “on the fence” about the issue, or someone who has an opposing viewpoint can be good pedagogical strategies.

In other instances where professors have created tight-nit classroom communities, writing assignments can ask students to address peers who might be interested in what they have to say. Then the burden of creating and sustaining interest in the reader rests with the writer.

Style and Format

Successful writing assignments give clear guidelines on these aspects of style and format:

• The Formality of the Prose (informal, semi-formal, formal)
• Length of the document along with specifications on font and margins
• Genre of the Manuscript (essay, report, memo, proposal, journal, et al.)
• Organization of the Document
• Thesis-Based Prose and Non-Thesis Based Prose

The Writing Process

Writing assignments typically offer specifications in regard to time frame, writing process involved, and the logistics for submitting the document. Students will probably have questions such as these in mind:

• When is it due?
• Is there a class set aside for peer review or workshopping?
• Is peer review mandatory? Is it graded?
• Is some type of pre-writing, outline, prospectus, or required conference required before the final draft is turned in?
• Can the document be revised, and what's the policy in regard to how much a revision can improve the grade of a paper?
• What's expected in revision? Is "deep revision" expected?
• When a paper is turned in, are all brainstorming, notes, outlines, drafts, and
  peer review comments supposed to be submitted along with the writing assignment?
• Do you want a hard copy, or is it submitted via WebCT or email?            

Criteria for Evaluation

Like questions about the writing process above, it's also crucial for writing assignments to guide writers about critera used to evaluate the documents and also provide examples or "models" of writing assignments that were successful and unsuccesful. Students will probably have questions such as these in mind:

• What makes an assignment earn an A, B, C, D, or F?
• What does a successful paper have to do?
• What different features (development, organization, readability, style, grammar) of the paper will you be
  analyzing? Which ones are weighed more heavily?
• How much does grammar matter?
• Do you use a rubric that shows how the writing assignments will be evaluated?
• Do you have any examples of what's an average to excellent response to the
  assignment?
• Do you have any models to show us what you expect?
  

Tim N. Taylor, 2008