7 Principles of Effective Writing Assignments

          Designing effective writing assignments is tricky:  Explanation of the purpose of the assignment and the teacher’s expectations is essential, as is anticipating and answering students’ questions.  Too little direction may leave students confused and anxious, uncertain how to proceed, while excessive direction may overwhelm.  Clarifying and simplifying an assignment may be more helpful than additional explanation, as extensive detail may signal an unnecessarily complex assignment that may need to be revised or discarded.  Effective writing assignments offer students some choice, both in how to approach the topic and the method of development.  In order to design effective writing assignments, teachers need to consider several other factors as well.

 Effective writing assignments address these “7 Principles” explicitly for students:

 
1.         How the Assignment Relates to Course Content Objectives

Effective writing assignments draw upon course materials and practices learned in the course.  The first step is not to think about writing, but about what you want students to learn.  What do you want the assignment to accomplish?  What do you expect students to do with writing?  Is writing an opportunity for students to display knowledge of material covered in the course, to demonstrate comprehension?  Is it an invitation to produce a specific genre or form?  Is it designed to stimulate critical thinking or student growth?  Is it an opportunity for students to develop knowledge and thereby extend course content?   Or some combination of goals?

2.         Students’ Interest in & Understanding of the Topic

Effective writing assignments engage students actively with material about which they are or can become knowledgeable.  Students can only write successfully on topics about which they know and understand.  Effective assignments, then, make clear the basis of that knowledge and understanding:  For example, are students to apply concepts learned from course reading?  If so, what scaffolding does your assignment provide to help students learn those concepts and how to apply them?  How will you help students to bridge the distance between what they already know and new, unfamiliar ideas about which they are expected to write?

 3.         Purpose

Effective writing assignments explain the rhetorical purpose.  Students need to know why they are writing:  To inform readers?  To persuade?  To entertain?  Or some combination of these?  Effective writing assignments also specify the method of development:  Are students to summarize, describe, illustrate, demonstrate, define, classify, compare, contrast, explore, discuss, explain, interpret, analyze, prove, critique, evaluate, argue for or against, or some combination of these?  Specifying the method of development, however, may not be enough.  Because the values and assumptions underlying these directives vary from one teacher to another, critical terms require explanation.  Highlight key terms in your assignment and make class time to explain what they mean to you.

 4.         Audience

Purpose is inseparable from audience; therefore, effective writing assignments also specify audience.  Audience is most easily imagined when it is clearly identified and real.  Teachers need not be the only audience for student writing.  A letter to a state representative or an article for a popular magazine or the campus newspaper invites students to write as professional writers do, considering who their readers are, how well informed they are about the subject, how interested or resistant they are likely to be, and what the writer wants the reader to learn about the subject.

5.         Genre & Formal Conventions

Purpose and audience determine genre and form; therefore, effective writing assignments tell students what disciplinary patterns of development and formal conventions to follow.  They invite students to compose in genres they are likely to encounter in other classes as well as outside the university.  Learning the writing experiences of your students may help you to understand where your expectations and their experiences may be out of synch, and where you may need to work to bridge such gaps if students are to write effectively in unfamiliar genres.  Thus, teachers need to find out what students know about particular genres, and then help them to link past writing experiences to new ones.  Instructors must also keep in mind that while academic disciplines share certain genres such as abstracts, proposals, and reviews of literature, their conventions vary from one discipline to another.  Examples or models for students to follow may help them learn new patterns of development.

6.         Sources of Information

Effective writing assignments make explicit where information will come from:  Are students to rely primarily upon personal experience, direct observation, interviews, assigned reading, primary research, secondary research, or some combination of these?  If your assignment requires research, be sure to specify exactly what you mean by that, and where you expect research to come from.  If information comes from secondary sources, what kinds of sources are acceptable?  What are students expected to document, and what do you consider “common knowledge”?  What method of documentation do you require?   

7.         Assessment

Effective writing assignments explain how student writing will be responded to and evaluated.  They offer multiple opportunities for response, both from peers and teacher, as well as opportunities for revision based upon that feedback.  Will students have class time to read and respond to the work of their peers during the draft stage?  Will you invite students to assess their own work?  How will you respond as the teacher?  If you plan to read student writing at multiple stages of the writing process, what is most important at each stage?  One strategy for describing your assessment is to design an assessment rubric, which explains the features of writing you value and prioritizes those features according to their order of importance:  What particular aspects of student writing are most important to you?  Content, organization, grammar, mechanics, punctuation?

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Finally, teachers should keep in mind that we can learn from assignments’ failures as well as their successes, and should work continually to refine them.  Reflection—by both teacher and students—may help teachers to write assignments more effectively next time.  Ask students, once they have completed an assignment:  How interesting or engaging was it?  What did they like about it?  What did they dislike?  What did they learn as a result of writing?  What questions did they have about it?  Would they recommend using it again?  How might the assignment be revised or improved?