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“Write a paper on mitosis”: Composing and
Assessing Effective Writing Assignments
A Fall 2008 Professional Development Week Workshop
by
Dr. Frank Fritz
Assistant Professor
English Department
Table of Contents
What All Good Assignments Have 2
Assignment Design Exercise 3-4
Examples of Design Approaches 5-6
Ten Useful Tips 7
Examples of Assignments 8-9
Example of Grading Rubric 10
What all good assignments have:
A checklist for creating a rich rhetorical problem
The task: Explain what the student is supposed to do. Could be a problem or question to
address, a proposition to defend or refute, or a rhetorical mode to follow.
The aim: What is the purpose of the writing activity? Persuasive? Referential? Self-
expressive? Literary? Articulate your specific learning goals for the assignment:
points of content learning, formal goals and constraints,
thinking tasks, relationship to the other
relationship to the course writing assignments in the
goals, course (sequencing).
writing contexts (writer,
audience and purpose),
The audience: Who should the students imagine they’re writing to? (Beware of the
teacher as audience of one. It’s tough to write authoritatively to someone who clearly has
more authority.)
The role: What position should the writer take to the material? Synthesizer of best
thinking? Problem-solving detective? Field or laboratory researcher? Reviewer of a
controversy? Advocate in a controversy?
The form or mode: The form can be a letter, an essay, or a report. Modes include
classification, narration, description, definition, comparison, evaluation, etc.
The criteria of success: What specific features will a successful paper have?
Some possible ideas for developing criteria:
organization correct use of course-
focus specific concepts and
critical thinking terms
original thinking depth of coverage
integration of research precise use of language
logic sufficient development
appropriate mode of professional tone
structure and analysis minimum number of
format surface feature errors
correct use of sources
The format: page length, manuscript form, citation style, etc.
The process to follow: The process includes prewriting, strategies for revision, research
or data collecting procedures, early and revised draft deadlines.
2
Assignment-Design Process
Part One
1. List, recall or consider the main objectives of your course.
2. List several concepts or thinking tasks central to your course. You might consider concepts
or tasks which have given your students difficulty in the past.
3. Given the list above, what would you like your students to learn from this assignment? List
and rank in order of importance. (See page 9, #1, for examples.)
4. Brainstorm (a) preliminary description(s) of an assignment. Consider defining a special
audience, a specific role from which your students should approach the assignment, a
dramatic situation, and/or a format for the assignment. For examples, see pages 6 & 7.
5. What will you use to evaluate this assignment? List criteria then rank in order of importance.
The ranking should reflect the list generated in #2. See page 3 for helpful ideas on criteria.
3
Assignment-Design Process
Part Two
6. What problems do you anticipate your students might have with completing this assignment?
7. What in-class or out-of-class activities will help your students prepare for the assignment and
help them solve the problems you anticipate? (Examples: focused classroom discussion,
teacher modeling how he/she would tackle the assignment, interviews, group brainstorming,
films, library search, lab work, etc.)
8. Can you use some of the activities listed in #6 to generate freewriting which will help
students shape their drafts? For example, you can use an open-ended question to guide their
freewriting.
9. Describe the steps of the process your students will follow to do this assignment. I
recommend that you include prewriting activities, opportunity for at least one preliminary
draft, and peer critique of the drafts.
10. Now decide on the assignment’s formal qualities by composing the assignment sheet for the
students. Specify the objectives, the task, the criteria, etc. See the checklist of what the best
formal assignments have.
11. Take your draft of your formal assignment to a colleague for feedback. To receive the most
useful feedback, I recommend you give your reader specific questions and concerns to
address.
4
Examples of Three Approaches to Designing Assignments
1. Present a proposition (thesis) that students are supposed to defend or refute.
This proposed bridge design does/does not meet the criteria set forth by the city in its request
for proposal. [Civil engineering]
“The path to holiness lies through questioning everything.” Agree or disagree. [Religious
studies]
Based on the attached case, the nurse supervisor should/should not honor the husband’s
request that his wife (a stroke victim) be assigned a new nurse. [Nursing]
Schizophrenia is a brain disease./ Schizophrenia is learned behavior. [Psychology]
Mercury amalgam fillings are/are not safe. [Research project for a course in scientific
argument]
Global warming is/is not a significant environmental threat at this time. [Environmental
biology course]
Write a letter to the editor against the sales tax on the grounds of it being a regressive tax.
Explicitly use ratio and proportion to explain to the uninformed reader the meaning of
regressive tax. [Mathematics]
Upon arriving home for Christmas, you discover your father writing a letter to his
representative in Congress urging the passage of legislation limiting beef imports from
Argentina. He argues that such imports put ranchers out of business, cause U.S. packing
houses to close, and generally make this country poorer. You, on the basis of your brilliant
performance in Economics 105, engage your father in a spirited discussion (in other words, a
heated argument). Write the argument that you use to convince him of the error of his
position. Your father doesn’t understand economic jargon, so any jargon you use must be
explained. [Economics]
2. Give students a problem or question that demands a thesis answer.
Write an essay of no more than two double-spaced pages answering the following question:
Is a skilled trout fisherman on a variable interval or a variable ratio schedule of
reinforcement? Imagine that you are writing to a classmate who has missed the last week of
lectures and finds the textbook explanations of “variable interval” and “variable ratio”
confusing. [Psychology]
5
Gauss’s law relates the field at the surface of the charge inside the surface. But surely the
field at the surface is affected by the changes outside the surface. How do you resolve this
difficulty? [Physics]
Choose a question that Plato answers in one way and Aristotle answers in a different way (for
example, “How do things change?”). Then, in the first part of your paper, explain to your
reader the differences in these two theories. In the second part of your paper, evaluate the
two positions, arguing that one position is stronger than the other. In this section, specifically
answer the following question: What situation or thing does one theory explain well that the
other cannot explain adequately? [Philosophy]
3. Ask students to follow an organizational structure that requires a problem-thesis
pattern.
Write an essay of X pages on any topic related to this course. Use the introduction of your
essay to engage your reader’s interest in a problem or question that you would like to address
in your essay. Show your reader what makes the question both significant and problematic.
The body of your essay should be your own response to this question made as persuasive as
possible through appropriate analysis and argumentation, including effective use of evidence.
Midway through the course, you will submit to the instructor a prospectus that describes the
problem or question that you plan to address and shows shy the question is (1) problematic
and (2) significant.
6
Ten Useful Tips for Designing and Implementing Writing Assignments
1. Articulate your specific learning goals for the assignment:
points of content learning,
thinking tasks,
relationship to the course goals,
writing contexts (writer, audience and purpose),
formal goals and constraints,
relationship to the other writing assignments in the course (sequencing).
2. Consider using an audience-specific, context/problem-driven, goal-oriented designs.
3. Employ a process approach:
assign process-oriented tasks (activities to prepare the writer and the writing),
provide helpful specific procedures.
4. Provide students with explicit criteria and their relative weight.
Some possible ideas for developing criteria:
organization correct use of course-specific
focus concepts and terms
critical thinking depth of coverage
original thinking precise use of language
integration of research sufficient development
logic professional tone
appropriate mode of structure minimum number of surface
and analysis feature errors
format
correct use of sources
5. Make your criteria meaningful for students by demonstrating and using them in class.
6. Demystify academic conventions by explaining them with examples.
7. Make use of various rhetorical modes: process analysis, comparison-contrast, narration,
definition, description, analysis, synthesis.
8. Consider employing specific genres: the letter to the editor; the Q & A interview format;
the inverted pyramid; book/article/performance review; laboratory paper; police report; risk
management analysis; journal article; annotated bibliography; the traditional rhetorical form:
introduction-statement of fact-confirmation-concession-refutation-conclusion, the thesis-
finding essay (findings in conclusion); etc. What forms do you find in your own discipline?
9. Consider using a publishing opportunity: a course booklet, paper presentations, etc.
10. Share the contexts of grading with your students.
7
Letter to the Editor
This first short writing assignment will help you warm up your writing, yet allow us to analyze
closely some of the key features of a persuasive public writing occasion.
Write a letter to the editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer, expressing whatever
viewpoint you choose.
If you don’t have any issue to write about, start reading.
A few points to keep in mind:
Audience: who is it and what implications does this hold for your argument and language?
Language: Since this letter is quite short, it needs to be filled with powerful language that
emphasizes your position/presentation and says much in few words. Choose your words
carefully so as not to offend readers (or editors).
Introduction: Make sure it grabs and hooks your reader. Does it get right to the point? Is your
argument clear from the outset to both you and your audience? (Thesis)
Organization: Make sure your argument is logical and easy to follow. Do not digress from your
point; be sure there is no extraneous or irrelevant information.
Authority: Be sure to look for places in your letter where you can provide specific data,
examples and testimony that show you are knowledgeable and intelligent, and therefore someone
with an argument worth considering. Wild, unfounded and unsupported accusations,
generalities, and/or banalities do not constitute quality opinion writing. It’s true that everyone
has a right to his/her opinion, but it is also true that not all opinions are equally valid or even
worth considering.
Format: Your letter will most like average between 150-180 words, but must be less than 200
words. You must get as close to the maximum number of words allowed as possible. No three
liners, please. Be sure to examine the paper’s policy regarding publishing—including where to
send your letter once it is completed.
Grading Criteria
Draft meets minimum expectations of the assignment.
Draft demonstrates clear sense of audience in choices in argument and of language.
Introduction grabs reader and quickly moves reader to thesis.
Argument is logical and easy to follow.
Draft employs legitimate, well-founded support to provide the letter with authority.
Syntax and diction are powerful, clear and precise.
Draft has a minimum number of surface feature errors.
Draft due in class: Tuesday, January 22
Final version due in class: Tuesday, January 29
8
Final Paper Topic
Please write a first person account of your thinking as you explore different possible answers to
one of the three questions from the course: What does it mean to be human? How should we live
our lives? What is the universe and how do we fit into it? This paper might be called a thesis-
finding essay.
Introductory Section
Begin by introducing the question you chose and why. Be sure to discuss the specific ways that
you believe your chosen question is significant. Also, reflect on how you might have addressed
your chosen question before you ever took a class like CIE. (Approximate length: 1 page)
Middle Section
The body of the paper will be your further exploration of the possible ways to think about and
answer your question. For the body you will need to select at least four works (but you can
use—and I suggest that you use—more) from this course. Thus, your account should include
both external details (what specific passages you read and refer to, what specific ideas you
paraphrase from your selected readings) as well as internal mental details (what you were
thinking about, how your ideas evolved, what your tentative conclusions had been). You might
imagine this section of your essay as an intellectual detective story. (Approximate length: 3-4
pages)
Concluding Section
The final section of your essay should contain what decisions, discoveries or realizations you
have come to through your explorations, including any additional specific textual evidence you
need to demonstrate your reasons for your responses to your selected question. (Approximate
length: ¾ - 1 ½ pages)
Criteria for Grading:
Persuasiveness of your expression;
Depth, specificity and development of your ideas and explanations;
Your use of specific and relevant textual support;
Accurate citations and textual identification for quotations and all paraphrases;
Coherence and cohesion of your organization;
Your precise use of language – word choice and sentence structure; and
Absolutely no surface feature errors.
Length: 6-7 pages
Draft due in class: December 7
Final draft due in class: December 12
9
An Example of a Rubric for Grading an Assignment
- The language of the rubric is taken verbatim from the grading criteria of the assignment.
Evaluative Criteria: Formal Response #4
1. Draft follows assignment, in particular by looking at the analyzed text as an object
intended to create effects in readers.
Yes No
2. Clear sense that the draft is oriented to an audience and has a clear purpose.
Superior Above Average Adequate/Average Poor Failing
3. All paragraphs are coherently and cohesively organized.
Superior Above Average Adequate/Average Poor Failing
4. Draft provides sufficient specific detail and development, including specific textual
references.
Superior Above Average Adequate/Average Poor Failing
5. Syntax and diction are precise and elegant.
Superior Above Average Adequate/Average Poor Failing
6. Draft contains a minimum number of surface feature errors.
Superior Above Average Adequate/Average Poor Failing
10
