Assignment
Sheets | Sequencing Assignments | The 5-Paragraph Essay | Avoiding
Plagiarism Sample Assignments | Additional Resources
Designing a Writing Assignment
Most “survival guides”
for new teachers present three key questions as the foundation of
assignment design:
- Why are students being asked to write
(purpose)?
- Who is the audience for the assignment
(context)?
- What is the structure of the finished product
(form)?
Each of these elements, while perhaps obvious,
contributes necessary information for students attempting to meet our
expectations. Making the three elements clear in our writing
assignments is critical for encouraging thoughtful responses.
- > Purpose – This might be
the most difficult element for our students to grasp. The answer to the
question "Why are you writing?" is not "Because I’ve been given an
assignment.” When students view the purpose of writing as “fulfilling
the assignment,” they often produce what they consider to be “safe”
prose (what they think we want); they are not engaged in the process of
writing to learn material or to persuade an audience. To help students
move toward engagement, provide a succinct purpose statement: "Your
task in this paper is to analyze three high school history textbooks,
and then argue for the one you judge to be most effective." Of
course, many of the tasks involved in fulfilling this purpose -
analysis, evaluation, recommendation - are complicated for novice
writers and should be the topic of some class discussion.
- > Context/Audience – While
the ultimate audience for all schoolwork is, to some extent, the
teacher of the course, it is useful to give students writing
assignments that imagine a more specific audience. (This audience could
certainly be the class as a scholarly community: “Write to convince
your peers in this class.”) For example, in the textbook analysis
above, it would make a difference if the students were composing a
proposal to the school board or an editorial for a conservative (or
liberal) news magazine. Nevertheless, simply telling students, “You are
writing an argument to be presented to the school board” is not usually
enough to provide the context of the assignment. What do students know
about the functions of a school board? Who serves on a school board?
What is their educational level? What kinds of arguments are going to
be most effective? Classroom discussion of these issues can contribute
to “pre-writing” tasks and help students grasp the terms of their
rhetorical situation.
- > Form – This element
includes the standard details of a writing assignment – page length,
format requirements (a title, double-spaced, etc.), due dates, and
other guidelines. In addition to the basics, experienced SAGES
instructors recommend stating your own stylistic preferences (as well
as those of your discipline). Roy Ritzmann, professor of biology,
makes this seem like obvious advice: “Tell students what you want!”
Unfortunately, many of the things we want are apparent only after we’ve
received a pile of papers and realize what we didn’t get. But hindsight
can produce better assignments in the future. Consider keeping a list
of qualities of good writing: from mechanical issues (Is it acceptable
to use personal pronouns in papers for your class? Does your discipline
favor/disfavor the passive voice?) to more subtle issues in
argumentation (What counts as good evidence in your discipline? How
detailed/specific should an argument be?).
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Writing
Assignment Sheets
Effective writing assignment sheets address all
three of the topics discussed above – purpose, context, and form. In
addition, they often give at least an indication of how the paper will
be evaluated. In some cases, assessment may be heavily weighted toward
a specific skill (e.g., accurate summary/paraphrase of others’
arguments, or development of a distinctive, specific thesis statement)
that has been emphasized in classwork leading up to the written
assignment.
Some assignment sheets overwhelm students by
suggesting too many possibilities. If, for example, you provide
your class with an extended list of questions, students may respond
with drafts that mechanically address, one by one, each of the
questions, without formulating a coherent argument. If you are
inclined to present several questions as prompts for student writing,
it is helpful to state clearly that students should not attempt to
answer the entire list.
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Sequencing
Assignments
A SAGES seminar, like any writing-intensive class,
must inculcate skills in a deliberate, purposeful way across the
semester. To this end, it makes sense to regard your assignments –
both small/informal and big/formal – as parts of a developmental
sequence, designed to strengthen your students' writing
abilities.
The first step in creating such a sequence is to
ask: What are the skills necessary to write a successful
essay? To complete the assignment about history textbooks, for
example, students will have to:
- > Identify textbooks
(research skills)
- > Evaluate the textbooks
(which includes developing criteria for the evaluation)
- > Summarize the results
of their analysis (including summaries of the textbooks themselves)
- > Frame their
recommendation for the school board (identify the audience and its
expectations)
- > Use evidence effectively
(choose appropriate evidence to support the analysis)
So, to lead up to this assignment, you might
include several class activities and/or smaller writing assignments.
For example:
- > Take the class to the library to identify
textbooks for review
- > Choose a few textbooks, copy their
descriptions of a particular event, and devote class time to discussing
their similarities and differences
- > Practice summarizing texts in class
(and/or for homework)
- > Work as a class to develop evaluation
criteria for textbooks
- > Discuss in class the audience for the
final product – Who is the school board?
Identifying a clear
progression of skills – both within individual writing assignments and
also across the course as a whole – not only helps students judge their
own progress; it also allows you to focus on specific skills in your
responses to student papers.
See also Building Blocks for Academic Writing.
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The 5-Paragraph
Essay
Students in high school are often taught to write
academic papers in a standard form called the 5-paragraph essay.
Though the name refers (with characteristic rigidity) only to the
number of paragraphs that such an essay contains, the form also
mandates the number and location of pro and con arguments, as well as
the rhetorical design of the introduction and conclusion.
Alan Rocke likens this form to the scales one
must practice when learning the piano – pedagogically useful but not
exactly music. While the 5-paragraph essay may teach
students a bit about the structure of paragraphs and arguments, it does
not foster the level of analysis or expression that we expect of
college graduates. Nevertheless, since most students have some
experience with the 5-paragraph essay, it may be a useful place to
begin discussion of argumentative form – especially in conjunction with
the following web resources:
- >
http://essayinfo.com/ - This is a commercial site "for anyone who
wants to improve the writing skills." (There is a week's worth of
interesting class discussion to be had analyzing the mistakes and
infelicities of the site's own prose.) This site offers basic format
and style information about a variety of essay types, including the
"5-Paragraph Essay." Asking students to read through this information
might provide a good starting point for discussing the uses and abuses
of the form.
- >
http://www.englishdiscourse.org/5.paragraph.essay.format.html -
This page is part of John Richard Stevens' "English Composition &
Literature" site (Stevens is affiliated with Oklahoma State University,
but the site is independent). The site itself is notable for its
maintenance of several e-journals of undergraduate student academic
writing (English Discourse in Composition publishes
argumentative essays by undergraduates in 3-6 issues per year). The
page on the 5-paragraph essay gives explicit directions for each
paragraph in an essay; for example:
Body paragraphs employ the One, Two, Three
Rule, which is:
1) Make a debatable claim.
2) Support the claim with a quote.
3) Explain the connection between your claim and the quote, which means
you make an intellectual conclusion.
> http://abeged.com/5parwork.html - Here,
courtesy of the Northern Berkshire Adult Basic Education Program, is a
worksheet for creating 5-paragraph essays. Just fill in the relevant
information, and you're ready to go. (An interesting artifact for class
discussion about planning, organizing, etc.)
>
http://www.libarts.ucok.edu/english/rhetoric/rhetoric/five_paragraph_essay.htm
- This site (produced at the University of Central Oklahoma) begins the
exploration of the uses/abuses of the 5-paragraph essay with a section
entitled "Pro vs Con".
>
http://www.termpaperscorner.com/5-paragraph-essay.html - Finally,
consider that there are many online services that specialize in writing
these papers for students. This (and many other sites) might provide a
space for an ethical discussion about writing, academics, and
intellectual property. (See also Plagiarism
& the Internet.)
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Avoiding
Plagiarism
While there may not be a “plagiarism-proof”
assignment, there are some strategies that make it much harder for
students to turn in work that is not their own. The following
suggestions are collected from faculty members and writing instructors
across campus.
- > Make the writing assignment
specific to the course. You might require that students quote
from one of the texts you have read together in class, or you might
make the topic specific to discussions you have had in class. A generic
prompt – “write a research paper” – can be more easily plagiarized.
- > Require pre-writing and/or
multiple drafts of papers. Asking students to turn in
their notes, outlines, and/or drafts of papers helps you track their
progress from the original idea to the final project. These materials
need not be graded; you may simply note whether they have been
submitted or not, and refer back to them when the final paper comes
in.
- > Write assignments in stages/parts.
If an essay assignment has several parts to it, each due at a different
stage of the writing process, students will be less likely to “borrow”
an entire paper from another source at the last minute. So, you
might ask students to do an informal journal entry on their topic for
one part of the assignment; to summarize a scholarly article that is to
be used in the assignment; or to submit an introductory paragraph
before the final version is due.
- > Read a lot of each student’s work
- including informal, ungraded writing assignments. If you know
your students’ writerly voices, you will be able to tell when a piece
of writing doesn't match their usual diction or level of achievement.
For more information about detecting and handling
academic dishonesty, please see the Academic
Integrity page on this site.
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Sample
Assignments and Assignment Sequences
Additional
Resources
- >
Writing Resources. Developed by students enrolled in ENGL 400
("Rhetoric & the Teaching of Writing"), these resources include
information about journals in composition theory & pedagogy,
textbooks, and pedagogical approaches.
- > UT Austin, "Substantial Writing Component"
Assignment Guidelines - This site offers tips on writing shorter,
longer, and collaborative assignments. The Writing Across the
Curriculum program at UT Austin is under the direction of Joan Mullen
(formerly Professor of English at the University of Toledo), and the
website offers a number of helpful materials for new (and returning)
faculty members.
- > Penn State University, Center for Writing
Excellence - This page contains a brief statement of purpose and
links to two related pages that provide checklists for "Using Informal,
Ungraded Writing" and "Using Formal, Graded Writing." The lists of
questions are useful heuristics.
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