Designing an Effective Writing Assignment

Whether you've just decided to incorporate more writing assignments in your course(s) or you already have an established writing assignment, this page contains information for creating clear and effective writing assignments.

As a paper advising instructor (English faculty provide free writing help to any student needing assistance with an essay—from any discipline), I routinely have students coming to me not to get help with proofreading or composing, but to get clarification about their instructor's directions/assignment sheet. I do my best to decipher the instructor's assignment, and I always recommend that the student see the instructor directly about getting more specific feedback, but the following information provides some general guidelines about designing an effective writing assignment:

Prioritize
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Decide what is most important to you about the assignment (Format? Clarity? Demonstration of knowledge? Audience awareness? Synthesis of information? Analysis?). Before you provide questions, or writing prompts, or the criteria for evaluation, spell out what is you want students to achieve (with the assignment). What is the PURPOSE of the assignment?

In the paragraph prior to the “first steps” section of the assignment sheet, don't be shy about using the first person pronoun to tell students what you envision them doing with the assignment: “Now that we have finished reading, discussing, and analyzing the two reports, I want you to demonstrate that you can explain the authors’ ideas to someone else who has not read the reports.”

Provide a visual outline of how you think the essay will unfold
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I cannot emphasize enough the importance of a visual reinforcement of what you're explaining in the assignment sheet. Sometimes, we enlightened, enthusiastic instructors are TOO verbose. Simplify. Streamline the written explanation and show how the prompt/writing assignment can be broken down into bite-size pieces.

  1. Paragraph One: Introduce the essay's subject and your thesis
  2. Paragraph 2: Give the historical background…………
  3. Paragraph 3: Summarize the article……
  4. Paragraph 4: Provide your reaction……
Break-up a complex, multi-layered assignment into smaller, more manageable assignments
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If you're asking students to write a reaction paper, for instance, or respond to a piece of artwork, then divide the summary-response assignment into two shorter essays. One short essay helps the student stay focused on summarizing the reading/artwork (you grade, then, for reading comprehension or general understanding of the composition's main idea); another essay allows them to write a reaction to the reading/artwork (then the objective is to grade their analysis).

Spell out the Grading Criteria
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Provide a list of exactly what you'll use to evaluate their writing. Use a dichotomous scale (insert), or simply provide a bulleted list of the grading criteria.