UMUC Effective Writing Center (EWC)

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Help Your Students Improve Their Writing

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• Helping Students Avoid Plagiarism
• Teaching Students to Cite Online Sources

Designing Effective Writing Assignments

• Types of Writing Assignments
• Informal and Formal Writing Assignments
• Characteristics of Effective Writing Assignments
• Guiding Questions for Developing Assignments
• Assignment Description Checklist
• Assessing the Research and Writing Process
• Sequencing Assignments

 

 

 

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Types of Writing Assignments

The following is a list of writing assignments that might develop from research. The topics range through various discourse aims including the expressive, the exploratory, the informative, the scientific, the literary, and the persuasive

•   Expressive
  • Mission statements and vision statements
  • Proposals
  • Constitutions
  • Legislative bills
• Exploratory
  • Definitions
  • Diagnoses
  • White papers
  • Marketing analyses
  • Opinion surveys
  • Feasibility studies
  • Annotated bibliographies
  • "Literature" reviews (as opposed to literary)
  • Problem solutions
• Informative
  • News articles
  • Magazine feature articles
  • Reports
  • Encyclopedia articles
• Scientific
  • Formal arguments from principle, e.g., applying or implementing a theory
  • Arguments generalizing from particulars, e.g., testing a hypothesis
• Literary
  • Historical fiction
  • Ballads
  • Plays, TV, or film scripts on course related issues
• Persuasive
  • Advertising campaigns
  • Political speeches
  • Editiorials
  • Social, political, or artistic criticism

Adapted from: Kinneavy, J. L. (1971). A theory of discourse: The aims of discourse. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.