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Writing in the Disciplines
Sample Lessons
Writing Good Writing Assignments
Have you ever been overwhelmed by the rush of student questions
right after you distribute a writing assignment? Have you ever
been disappointed that or puzzled why students didn’t seem to
“get” the assignment? Have you ever felt a paper deserved a
certain grade, but weren’t quite sure why? Many teachers have
experienced these situations, situations that can be avoided by
creating a good writing assignment.
As Ed White, a founding father of contemporary writing
assessment, tells us in Teaching and Assessing Writing,
“We need to offer the best assignments we can devise in order to
stimulate our students’ creativity and willingness to learn what
we teach.” (The remainder of chapter 2, “Assessment and the
Design of Writing Assignments,” is an extended and excellent
discussion of the topic.) A good writing assignment doesn’t
guarantee good writing, but a bad one often guarantees bad
writing. The difference between a good writing assignment and a
bad one is usually the amount of thought a teacher puts into the
assignment long before it is assigned. The teacher must ask (and
answer!) many questions, all of which are related to these four:
What is the purpose of this assignment? What is the topic of
this assignment? How will students complete the assignment? How
will I assess the assignment
Thinking About Assignments
When a teacher begins to construct a
successful writing assignment, the first step is to obtain a clear idea of
the general parameters of the assignment. The answers to these general
questions are important as they may inform, affect, and even determine the
answers to other questions later in the process.
First, consider what you want to get out of the assignment. Which of the
course’s learning objectives will be measured by this assignment? What kind
of data do you need to show that the objective has been met? Then consider
what the students should get out of the assignment: What skills or knowledge
will the students demonstrate by successfully completing the assignment?
What kind of data do they need in order to improve and learn?
Next, consider the place of writing in the assignment. How integrated is
writing in the objectives identified above? Is writing itself one of the
objectives? What form of writing will best allow students to meet the
assignment’s objectives—a journal, short answer questions, a short paper, a
longer researched assignment, etc.?
The final general concern is how you plan to assess the assignment. Remember
that you don’t have to assess the writing itself. The act of writing
promotes learning in several important, albeit indirect, ways; however,
writing per se has to be assessed only if it is one of the assignment’s
objectives. Take the informal journal, for instance. The primary purpose of
this kind of assignment is to record thoughts and generate ideas, not to
produced polished prose. In fact, in the most successful journals, writers
are not concerned with spelling or grammar or even sentences; heck, I let my
students draw pictures in their journals if that is what works best for
them. In this case, assessing the writing itself would not only be
unnecessary, but inappropriate.
Prewriting Assignments
An assignment for a writing task is itself a writing task, and hence should follow a similar process in construction. The broad strokes of the assignment having been determined, it’s time to look at the details of the assignment. This step is a good time to remember all of the student questions you have received for an assignment: now is when you are able to work the answers into the assignment before the questions are even asked.
Rhetorical Context
The first issue to consider is the “rhetorical context” of the assignment:
the assignment’s audience, purpose, and topic. The more guidance the
assignment provides for these issues, the more focused the student writing
will likely be.
Who will be reading the writing? The instructor, naturally, is one audience,
but are there other potential audiences for the writing: readers of an op-ed
page, for instance, or a community board, graduate school admissions
officers, professionals, classmates, and so on? What audience is implied by
the learning objectives? To what audiences will the students normally write
in the future? Remember that assignments with a “real world” context can
increase student motivation, raising the quality of student writing.
What is the writer’s purpose? What is the writer supposed to “do” with the
information: persuade someone of something, explain, describe, summarize,
evaluate, etc.?
The final issue of rhetorical context is the topic itself. What the topic of
the assignment, in terms of the subject, has already been determined. At
this point, the specific question or issue the students should address
should be determined, which leads to the perennial issue of topic choice.
Should an assignment offer only one topic to the student, a choice between
several options, or the freedom to choose whatever topic the student wishes?
The answer lies mostly in the learning objectives and the nature of the
student writer.
In general, total freedom stymies a student writer, especially if the
student is a novice to the discipline. Beginners are not familiar with the
field, and have not had a chance to develop their own interests, so very
broad topic choice can lead them rudderless; thus, topics such as “Analyze
Hamlet for an audience of junior high students” would best be saved for
advanced students who are more comfortable and experienced in the field.
Still, if the objective of the assignment is exploratory, some choice of
topic is inherent regardless of the student’s experience. At the other end
of the spectrum, if the objective is specific writing skills, then offering
only one topic removes the topic as a variable, allowing assessment to focus
on the writing itself. Students will complain about the boring topics, but
the argument could also be made that this is professional preparation: it is
not often that the employee gets to choose what to write about.
The Writing Process
Writing is a process, no matter what the assignment. In addition to good
practice, an explicit writing process for an assignment can increase student
motivation and make plagiarism more unlikely. Finally, several smaller
assignments can usually be scored in less time than one large assignment.
How can the assignment be broken down? Are there discrete steps that can be
separated into a series of smaller assignments? Do those discrete steps
allow the student to focus on a particular objective of the assignment (and
if so, how so)?
What deadlines for the smaller assignments allow the student ample time to
complete the assignment and the instructor ample time to assess it? How will
students submit the assignment—electronically or hard-copy? Where should the
students turn it in—in class, at an office, in a dropbox? Can students turn
work in after the deadline?
As you consider these questions, there are two issues to keep in mind: “To
collect or not to collect,” and “to assess or not to assess.” First, does
every assignment need to be collected? In principle, no, but in practice,
some kind of accountability must be built in to the process. But perhaps you
don’t need to collect it: perhaps an assignment can be used as part of
in-class exercise. Even if an assignment must be collected, the instructor
need not collect everything all the time. If your class is writing journals,
collect only some of them some of the time; eventually you will get to all
of the journals without facing them all at once.
Assessment
The final issue the instructor needs to face is assessment: does an
assignment need to be assessed or not? Probably, the answer is that every
assignment needs to be assessed somehow. The crucial question is actually
what form the assessment should take.
First determine what information you and the student need in terms of
feedback. Is a grade necessary or will comments alone suffice? What exactly
needs to be graded: completion, effort, or content? For the answer, look to
the assignment’s objectives: what is the easiest way for the instructor to
gather data to measure learning and to provide data to facilitate learning?
The instructor should work out all the assessment numbers and principles
ahead of time, so that the assignment can include a clear statement of
grading standards. Not only will this forestall student questions, but also
makes assessment quicker and more easily justified.
Drafting the Assignment
Once the instructor has determined all of the information that needs to go
into the assignment, the next task is to lay out and draft the assignment.
The layout of the actual “assignment sheet” is an often-overlooked part of
the assignment writing process; but it is nonetheless extremely important.
It doesn’t matter how much you think through the assignment if the student
can’t find the information once the assignment is handed out.
The following sections should be included on every assignment sheet,
although not necessarily in this order:
1. Context: Begin the assignment by explaining to the student what the general point of the assignment is: how does it connect to the class? to other assignments? to a broader, perhaps professional, context?
2. Deadlines: Clearly state when, where, and how students will submit the assignment. Include a policy on accepting late work.
3. Format: Clearly describe format requirements: length (pages or words), margins, font, size, disciplinary style (eg., MLA, APA, etc.), and so on. The more you detail here, the fewer questions students will have.
4. Assignment: Explain in detail the topic, purpose, and audience for the assignment. Be clear about the process that students should use, and what you expect to see in the final product. Provide separately, clearly marked sections on each process assignment if appropriate. The more information the student gets in this section, the less likely it is that the student will ask you what you want.
5. Assessment: Clearly indicate the grading standards and scale for the assignment. Include how much each assignment is worth in terms of itself and in terms of the course. Explain the scale or rubric that will be used to assign grades.
6. Models: The easiest way to forestall the “what do you want?” question is to show the student by providing models. The best choice is to use two models (an exemplary one and a not-so-successful one), although an exemplary model alone can be very helpful. To be fully effective, though, one must do more than merely hand out the models (if the students knew what to look for in the model, they probably wouldn’t need the model). There are several strategies to provide commentary on the models: take class time to discuss it with the students; have the same discussion on Forum; provide commentary on a hard-copy handout (using balloons in Word works very well for this); or hang samples on a class Web page that displays commentary in a two-column table or through hyperlinks.
Just as important, though, is to be careful about how the assignment sheet itself looks: a clear layout will help to clearly communicate the content. Some general suggestions:
1. Don’t fill up every square inch of space on the sheet of paper. Liberal “white space” not only makes the document more readable, it also leaves more space for students to take notes.
2. Use headers and other visual cues (skipping a line, using graphic lines and other separators, margins, etc.) to indicate sections of the assignment. This makes it easier for students to locate information.
Revising the Assignment
Once the assignment is written, it’s not done. It’s not even done when the
students turn in the assignment. Like all writing, an assignment is a
constantly evolving thing. As I tell my students, there is no such thing as
a finished piece of writing; there is only writing that has to meet a
deadline.
There are any number of reasons to revise an assignment. Perhaps you didn’t
get the information you needed to assess objectives. Perhaps the students
still didn’t “get it.” Perhaps enrollment shifts, and you end up with gen ed
students instead of majors (remember that your writing—the assignment—has an
audience, too). Whatever the reason, the assignment should be revisited each
time it is used, if only to change the deadlines.
Model Assignments (PDF format)
The following links take you to annotated assignments from several disciplines to show how these principles look when put (or not) into practice:
© 2005-2008, Southeast Missouri State University
Last Updated August 26, 2008
by Allen Gathman