Recap of Composition Conversation-Effective Writing Assignments

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The most recent Composition Conversation focused on one of the most rewarding and difficult tasks faced by teachers of writing: designing effective writing assignments. Many of the ideas that emerged in the discussion applied not merely to designing writing assignments but to good teaching practice. Two key insights dominated: developing good assignments takes time and frequent revision, and students benefit when challenged to come up with their own ideas and their own way of presenting them.

The conversation began with a litany of best practices, some obvious, others less so. All agreed that assignments should be in writing and that instructors needed to devote sufficient class time to going over the assignment. The assignment should focus on what students were supposed to do (not simply what they were not supposed to do). If the assignment required a specific process, the assignment should specify those steps as explicitly as possible. As much as possible, the criteria to be used to evaluate the work should be made clear at the time of the assignment. One participant noted that students often use an assignment sheet like a recipe—the clearer and more explicit we can make our instructions and expectations, the better the results.

Where do the good assignments come from? Most participants could recall starting with writing assignments of their predecessors, colleagues, and possibly teachers. “The best teacher is the best student” is one formulation of this common adage. Another is “the best teacher is the best thief.” But participants noted that while good teachers might start with the work of others, they also personalize and refine assignments over time. Everyone could recount some terrible essay assignment they inflicted on students, but everyone could also recall “fixing” the “bad” topics through revision. One participant offered this instructive advice: make notes on a topic as you read student responses to it. These notes might address what students do well, what they do poorly, and how students might have misread the topic. The notes might be simpler: “Never use this topic again!” The key is recognizing that developing a good assignment is not very different from developing a good technical document—the teacher needs to know his/her purpose, his/her audience, and must be willing to test the document on actual users to find out whether it works, and use the feedback of readers to improve each draft.

What characterizes a good assignment? All agreed that good assignments allow students to develop their own ideas and their own ways of presenting them. Usually from the best of intentions assignments become overly directive and limiting, and substitute the instructor’s thinking for the student’s. “Helping” easily slips into “doing for.” Sometimes students are given little or no choice in their response and struggle to work within the narrow limitations of a single topic to which they must but cannot respond, or an overly simple task that leaves them with little to do other than repeat the argument of the assignment. Some participants noted that some students imaginatively go beyond a topic, but by doing so produce an essay that runs the risk of appearing “off-topic.” In portfolio-assessed classes, the danger is other readers might see such license as signaling an inability to respond to an assignment. But teachers can usually distinguish between innovation and inability. in short, students benefit from our high expectations and suffer when we oversimplify what is in fact complex.

Questions to Ask When Designing an Assignment

• What purpose are students attempting to accomplish with their writing?
• Who's the audience for their writing? How much do students know about this audience?
• How familiar are my students with this genre of writing?
• How long should the paper be? Why this length?
• What is the assignment’s central task? What at a minimum must they do?
• What might students find difficult about this assignment? How can I help them without limiting them?
• Is there a specific sequence of steps or process that will help students write a successful essay? Does this process allow opportunities for feedback and revision?
• What are my evaluation criteria? How well do these criteria line up with my goals for this assignment?
  

Questions a Student Might Ask of an Assignment

• What is the instructor’s purpose in creating this assignment? What am I supposed to demonstrate?
• What exactly am I supposed to do?
• What is the process? What steps are required to do the assignment properly?
• Who, other than the instructor, might read or use this document?
• How will the instructor know the best papers from the worst?
  

Designing Effective Writing Assignments

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The many pedagogic resources available on designing effective writing assignments mostly agree on the importance of beginning with three questions:

Why? Why are students being asked to write?

For whom? Who is the audience for the writing?

What? What form will the finished product take?

These three questions, of course, correspond to purpose, audience, and genre, and an effective assignment will help students identify the purpose, audience, and genre of their writing.

While instructors might believe that the purpose of an assignment is clear, most inexperienced writers have difficulty identifying their purpose for writing. Often they believe their purpose is to complete an assignment, which leads to safe and disengaged responses. Consider providing a succinct statement of purpose, such as “Your purpose in writing this essay is to identify the main proposals for transforming the Los Angeles River, and then argue for the approach that you believe will be most effective.”

Many instructors are already including information about audience in their topics. It is not surprising, for example, to find a statement like the following on an essay assignment sheet: “While it is tempting to think that you are writing to me, the instructor, you should consider the entire class to be your audience.” Such advice is certainly a start, but students often find imaginary scenarios helpful, such as writing a letter to a public official or submitting a report to a campus group. Such scenarios, while obviously artificial, help students recognize the demands that real audiences can make. Courses that incorporate community engagement move one step beyond these artificial “real-world” scenarios to actual writing tasks (such as producing memos, brochures, user instructions and other documents) produced for flesh-and-blood readers.

As to the form of the finished product, we can be most helpful to students by being as explicit about our expectations as possible without being so directive and limiting that students are left with a “fill-in the blanks” assignment. Format, page length, process, even “pet peeves” about style and grammar should be stated upfront. If I believe that the only appropriate use of the word “thing” in a student essay is a reference to a 1951 film about vegetable-based aliens, then I should state that expectation on the assignment. In short, if students are expected to use certain forms and follow certain conventions, they should be instructed to do so.

Thinking about these three questions is only one way of approaching assignment design. We might also think about the assignment as it might be seen by our students. From the student’s perspective, the key questions might be

1. What is the instructor’s purpose in creating this assignment? What skills, knowledge, and/or abilities am I supposed to demonstrate?
2. What exactly am I supposed to do? What is the central task?
3. What is the process? What steps are required to do the assignment properly?
4. Who, other than the instructor, might read or use this document?
5. How will the instructor know the best papers from the worst?
   

While effective writing assignments take time and effort to create, well-planned assignments are not only easier for students to do, they are easier for the instructor to grade.

Questions to Ask When Designing an Assignment

• What purpose are students attempting to accomplish with their writing? Is this purpose do able?
• Who's the audience for their writing? How much do students know about this audience?
• How familiar are my students with this genre of writing? What do they need to know about this genre to be comfortable and successful?
• How long should the paper be? Why this length?
• What is the assignment’s central task? What at a minimum must they do or what at a minimum must they address?
• What might students find difficult about this assignment? How can I help them without being overly directive and limiting?
• Is there a specific sequence of steps, or process, that will help students write a successful essay? Does this process allow opportunities for feedback and revision?
• What are my evaluation criteria? How well do these criteria line up with my goals for this assignment? Of these, which are most important?

Preparing for the Next Course

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As students and faculty scramble to finish up the current quarter and the current course, both might be interested in what comes next. At CSULA, students must satisfactorily complete ENGL 101 to satisfy the written communications requirement of general education (GE), or receive transfer credit for an equivalent course. Students must also complete ENGL 102, which while not technically part of GE is an additional writing course required of all students.

Many of our first-year students, however, are required to take courses before they are eligible to take ENGL 101. These courses, ENGL 095 and ENGL 096, are developmental courses designed to ready under-prepared students for the challenges of ENGL 101. Rather than think of these courses, though, as separate and independent, it makes more sense to think of them as part of course sequences. Students, therefore, satisfy their GE written communications requirement by taking: a one-quarter composition course (ENGL 101), a two-quarter composition course (ENGL 096-101), or a three-quarter composition course (ENGL 095-096-101).

For most students, then, their composition course in Winter will simply be an extension of their Fall course. Since the primary objectives of ENGL 095 are focus, fluency, and rhetorical awareness, Winter term 096 instructors can expect their students to be capable in these areas. Since the primary objectives of ENGL 096 are the same as 095 plus the ability to engage critically with texts, Winter term 101 instructors can expect their students to be capable in these areas.

ENGL 102 instructors, however, cannot generalize about their students’ preparation. Students in ENGL 102 might have taken ENGL 095, 096 and 101, or 096 and 101, or only 101 at CSULA. They might have received AP credit for ENGL 101 and therefore not taken any composition at CSULA. They might be transfer students coming from an institution where they might have taken one, two, or even three lower division composition courses, but are required to take ENGL 102 because none of their courses articulate to CSULA’s ENGL 102. Ideally, students starting ENGL 102 should possess the knowledge and skills necessary to achieve all of the “outcomes” listed under “Outcomes for ENGL 101” (see below). These outcomes are taken directly from the Writing Program Administrators’ “Outcomes Statement for First Year Composition.” Experienced ENGL 102 instructors know, however, that there will be wide variation in the readiness of their students. The primary objective of ENGL 102 is to provide more advanced practice in writing and to introduce students to basic research methodologies, but the reality is that some students are not sufficiently prepared for “more advanced practice.”

Finally, students currently enrolled in ENGL 102 have further university writing requirements on their horizon. To graduate, students are not only required to complete ENGL 101 and ENGL 102 (or receive transfer credit for equivalent courses), they must also pass the Writing Proficiency Exam (WPE), and complete an upper division writing course in their major. So while our work ends with ENGL 102, our efforts to prepare students for success will hopefully continue to support them throughout their academic career.

Outcomes for ENGL 101: The WPA Outcomes Statement for First Year Composition

Rhetorical Knowledge

By the end of first year composition, students should

• Focus on a purpose
• Respond to the needs of different audiences
• Respond appropriately to different kinds of rhetorical situations
• Use conventions of format and structure appropriate to the rhetorical situation
• Adopt appropriate voice, tone, and level of formality
• Understand how genres shape reading and writing
• Write in several genres

Critical Thinking, Reading, and Writing

By the end of first year composition, students should

• Use writing and reading for inquiry, learning, thinking, and communicating
• Understand a writing assignment as a series of tasks, including finding, evaluating, analyzing, and synthesizing appropriate primary and secondary sources
• Integrate their own ideas with those of others
• Understand the relationships among language, knowledge, and power

Processes

By the end of first year composition, students should

• Be aware that it usually takes multiple drafts to create and complete a successful text
• Develop flexible strategies for generating, revising, editing, and proof-reading
• Understand writing as an open process that permits writers to use later invention and re-thinking to revise their work
• Understand the collaborative and social aspects of writing processes
• Learn to critique their own and others' works
• Learn to balance the advantages of relying on others with the responsibility of doing their part
• Use a variety of technologies to address a range of audiences

Knowledge of Conventions

By the end of first year composition, students should

• Learn common formats for different kinds of texts
• Develop knowledge of genre conventions ranging from structure and paragraphing to tone and mechanics
• Practice appropriate means of documenting their work
• Control such surface features as syntax, grammar, punctuation, and spelling.

Purpose, Audience, Genre

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The rhetorical turn in writing instruction has placed renewed emphasis on rhetoric and the rhetorical situation or context of writing. When students write, they participate in a community of readers and writers engaged in thinking, reading, discussing and writing about shared issues, ideas, and concepts. To be effective in this community, the writer must learn to be aware of the rhetorical situation. What do I want to accomplish with my writing? To whom am I appealing and what are their needs? What expectations of the audience must I satisfy or risk going unheard? These questions focus the writer’s attention on purpose, audience, and genre.

Purpose

The purpose of any piece of writing can be determined by the writer asking the simple question: “What am I trying to accomplish with this piece of writing?” The question might be simple, but the answer isn’t always. For example, a social worker writes an observation report to describe something. The purpose might be thought of as “describing X.” What the social worker wants to “accomplish,” however, is less obvious. The case worker might be trying to warn superiors about a potentially dangerous situation. In short, purpose involves understanding our own motives in writing.

Similarly, students must think beyond the mechanical particulars of the writing assignment. Wanting an ‘A’ has probably never helped anyone write a paper. One place to begin is to consider the instructor’s purpose in making the assignment. What does the instructor want me to learn? What kind of knowledge does the instructor want me to demonstrate? Furthermore, students might consider what “effect” they want to produce on their readers.

Audience

As experienced writers know, we must always imagine our audience. Even when we are writing with a specific reader in mind, that “reader” is really more our imagined version of that person than an actual person. Students are often very reluctant to imagine their audience, and often mistakenly assume that the instructor is their audience. A better place to start would be to assume that the audience is everyone in the class, some of whom will share the writer’s beliefs and ideas, and some of whom will not; some of whom will be as familiar with the text or with certain ideas, and some of whom will not.

Some assignments might specify hypothetical readers that students are supposed to address. Who are these readers? What do they know about the topic? What do they need to know? What are they likely to believe about this topic? Thinking about questions such as these will help a writer imagine and effectively appeal to his or her audience.

Genre

To speak of the "genre" of a piece of writing is to identify a set of conventions that should be followed. Knowing the genre of the writing and therefore knowing the associated conventions of the form can greatly simplify the writer's task.
As with purpose and audience, the genre of a piece of writing is sometimes very specific, and this is especially true in certain disciplines. A lab report in engineering must adhere to a very specific set of format and content rules, as must one in biology, though to a slightly different set of rules. Helping students recognize the different genres of writing and their associated conventions is key to helping them become effective and independent writers.

Thinking about Audience

Imagine you are going to send an email describing your activities over the last twelve months to six recipients: your best friend, your brother, your mother, your eighty-five year old English aunt, the chair of your department, and the director of a prestigious grant foundation. Would you send the same message to each recipient? Would you include the same activities? Would you describe them in the same way? Would you use the same language and style in each?

Thinking about Genre

In introductory writing classes instructors might not even be aware that their assignments call for knowledge or even mastery of a genre: the college essay, which is itself a genre. The college essay is usually an argument supported by certain permissible kinds of evidence with an introduction articulating a thesis, body paragraphs developing and supporting that thesis, and a conclusion summarizing the argument and/or suggesting the next step in the process. Some of us are probably also not aware that some “common rules” about writing are conventions of specific genres and not universal. For example, most writers are taught to avoid the passive voice, but this convention is mostly associated with genres like the college essay. Scientific procedural writing, for example, requires the use of the passive voice.

Making Reading Explicit

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Most composition instructors agree that many first-year students need help with reading and the statistics back them up. About 90% of first-year CSULA students are required to take the English Placement Test (EPT) and only about 10% of them score above 151 (the “cut score”) on the reading section. In the CSU system, well more than half of all test-takers score below 151 in reading. While we, as teachers of English and teachers of writing, might feel (correctly) that reading is the responsibility of all departments and courses, the university looks to the English Department to provide leadership in literacy education. But given the level of writing skills in our composition classes, how can we find time to teach reading too?

Experienced instructors already know the answer: we are already teaching reading, at least minimally by modeling for our students the practices and strategies of good readers. What many of us might not be doing is making explicit our assumptions and practices. As writing teachers we probably don’t think twice about talking with students about strategies for developing an argument, and yet we probably rarely discuss with students how we approach a text for the first time, or how we skim a text looking for clues about its organization, or how we decide what to write in the margins as we read. All of us bring to our reading a wealth of expertise that we could make explicit for our students to help them become better readers.

Talking About Reading

What do good readers do? First, they read frequently and for a variety of purposes, including pleasure. Second, they are active readers who seek for ways to understand a text. They read with purpose and attempt to understand the writer’s purpose in writing. And good readers recognize that just as writing requires revision, reading requires re-reading.

If we had to summarize these practices, we might begin by saying that

• Good readers preview the reading by reviewing the table of contents, chapter titles, headings and subheadings. They attempt to understand how the text is organized before they start reading.
  
• Good readers identify a purpose for reading: Why am I reading? What do I hope to get from the reading (information, ideas, pleasure)? How will I know when I’ve accomplished my purpose?
  
• Good readers place the reading in context. When was it written? By whom? For what purpose? What genre does it belong to and what conventions are associated with that genre?
  
• Good readers read quickly but are prepared to re-read. Does the writer always use topic sentences? Are paragraphs mostly filled with different kinds of evidence all supporting the same claim? Can parts be skipped or quickly skimmed?
  
• Good readers engage with the text, ask questions of the text, agree with it, disagree with it, relate it to other readings, and note when it confuses them.
  
• Good readers are able to summarize the text and frequently will reflect on the experience of reading. What is its main point? What was most/least effective about it? What problems did I encounter while reading?
  

By making explicit our reading expertise we can help students become more effective readers.

What Do Good Readers Do?

1. Read for a variety of reasons including (or especially) pleasure
   
2. Read at different speeds and intensities: skim, scan, or study depending on need
   
3. Read actively carrying on a conversation with the text
   
4. Read with an awareness of the text’s genre and associated conventions
   

What Do Good Readers Note About A Text?

1. Table of contents, chapter titles, index, introduction, headings, subheadings, and any other hint of global organization
   
2. The genre of the text (i.e. narrative, academic essay, and so on)
   
3. Thesis, topic sentences, transitions and other focusing devices that help identify the writer’s preferred method of local organization
   
4. Biographical information about the author, time, place and purpose of writing, and any other information that might help contextualize the text