UMUC Effective Writing Center

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Designing Effective Writing Assignments

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• 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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The Writing Situation

Effective writing doesn't occur in a void. It needs to have context, even if it is intended as an academic exercise. Writing assignments that merely point to a course-related topic typically lack an audience or purpose. So unless students know enough to create their own context for writing, they may see their role as delivering undigested packets of information to the teacher. You may help your students to produce significant writing by designing assignments that clearly spell out the writing situation.

James Kinneavy offers a useful scheme for understanding the writing situation in his application of the familiar communication triangle to the aims of discourse. The elements of discourse (the writer, the audience, the subject matter, and the message itself) are all represented in the communication triangle.

By emphasizing one or more of the various elements of discourse represented in the triangle, the writer chooses modes of discourse. Kinneavy describes the modes as follows:

• Expressive writing focuses on the writer's experience and motives.
• Exploratory writing asks questions.
• Informative writing answers questions.
• Scientific writing provides proof for its assertions.
• Literary writing invites attention to the message itself.
• Persuasive writing attempts to change the views or behavior of the reader.

Kinneavy's analysis of these aims of discourse can be extremely useful for designing writing assignments--regardless of the discipline. The purposes of writing offer alternatives to the topic-centered research paper in which the writer is expected only to report on research findings rather than to apply, analyze, synthesize, or evaluate resources. In addition to identifying subject matter, a good research-based writing assignment should specify at least the role of the writer (i.e., the purposes of the writing) and the intended audience.

Using the four elements of the communications triangle as a frame, you can generate writing assignments that have real context in various disciplines and in the workplace. (For a sample of such assignments, see "Types of Writing Assignments".)

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