2.4 How to Read Writing Assignments
In this part, we will learn how to interpret writing assignments. You have various writing assignments in your classes. Have you ever felt that you did not have any idea on where to start? This chapter is crucial to our understanding of how to write a good paper for any class. Like learning how to ride a bike, once you know how to interpret writing assignments, you will find confidence in taking college courses beyond the boundary of disciplines.
If you are writing a paper for a college class and your professor has given you a specific assignment or prompt, you should start working on your paper by reading the assignment carefully, long in advance of the deadline. The following tips will help you interpret writing assignments throughout your academic career!
Read an assignment through several times.
It may sound obvious, but too often students do not read an assignment closely enough, missing key elements and often underestimating its complexity. For any assignment, no matter how brief or detailed, you will need to read it through more than once–slowly–in order to analyze it carefully. As you read, you should underline or highlight the key elements of the assignment. Ask yourself about the assignment:
- What is the main thing I need to do to respond? Is there a central question I need to answer?
- What kind of paper do I need to write? How much do I know about this kind of paper?
- What kind of evidence do I need to base my arguments or analysis on?
- What are some of the other important details in this assignment? For example, how many pages? What kinds of sources do I need to use? How many sources? Which documentation style (like MLA or APA) do I have to follow?
Identify the central task(s) in the assignment.
Most academic writing assignments have a central task or a couple of central tasks—essentially jobs you need to do in your paper. Assignments typically ask you to “take a stand,” “argue” for one position or another, “support one position,” “explain” or “analyze” a complex text or data set or historical event, “do a close reading” of a text or event, or “compare” and “evaluate” two possible explanations or theories. As you analyze your assignment, you will want to make sure to identify the central tasks in it so that you can be sure that you do those in your paper—and that you make it explicit to readers that you are foregrounding or emphasizing that work in your paper.
Here are some sample assignments from undergraduate courses, annotated to show how to identify the central task in the assignment.
Examples
Writing assignment for a History class:
When the Soviet Union fell apart in 1991 it came as a surprise to the rest of the world. Some people credited (or blamed) Mikhail Gorbachev. Others credited (or blamed) the United States. Still others argued that the USSR had been unstable for decades and that it was a miracle that it had lasted for as long as it did. How would you explain the collapse of the USSR? In your opinion, what were the most important factors that led to the collapse? Be sure to provide evidence to support your argument. How long was the collapse in the making? Could Gorbachev have prevented the collapse? If so, how? If not, when did it become inevitable?
Let’s interpret it. The central task here is to “explain the collapse of the Soviet Union” by naming and explaining “the most important factors that led to the collapse.” As you plan your paper, you will want to focus on identifying a few of the most important factors that led to the collapse. And you will need to make the case for WHY those were the most important factors. To help you keep your paper on track and to assure your instructor as she or he is reading your paper that you are focusing on the central task, in the introduction to your paper you will need to be sure to have a clear central claim or thesis statement. That thesis statement should say some version of “The collapse of the Soviet Union resulted from . . . [and then name and preview a few of the most important factors that led to the collapse, in the order in which you will discuss those in detail in the body of your paper].” To explain those factors you will, of course, need to use knowledge you have learned from your course and from your readings as evidence to support your claim—and you will need to answer the question of whether Gorbachev could have prevented the collapse and explain why. But above all, your central task in your paper is to identify the most important factors leading to the collapse.
Examples
Writing assignment for an Environmental Studies class:
5-6 pages. Identify two different small ecosystems on campus. Describe each area as an ecosystem and analyze the interactions of significant environmental factors: soil, plant life, insect life, humans, etc. The bulk of your paper should come from your direct observations, but draw upon course readings when helpful for your explanation.
To succeed with this paper, you will, of course, have to do close observations of two small local ecosystems, describe those ecosystems fully with rich details from your observations (“the bulk of your paper should come from your direct observations”), and convey a good understanding of relevant course principles about ecosystems in your descriptions (“draw upon course readings when helpful”). In addition, you need to recognize with this kind of assignment that you will have to make a number of choices. Recognizing that you have to make choices to narrow and focus on what you’re doing is a big part of successfully interpreting a fairly general paper assignment like this one.
Be sure you understand the basics of the genre that the paper you’re writing.
Most paper assignments represent a genre (or kind) of paper typical of particular academic disciplines. They can be one of analysis, synthesis, explanation, and argument. As you analyze your paper assignment, you should think about what kind or genre of paper you will be writing. And if you’re new to writing that kind of paper, you should learn some more about that genre—especially about the rhetoric of that kind of paper, in other words, what kind of intellectual work it does, which audience is it usually written for and what prior knowledge it assumes, how it is usually structured.
When you are new to a particular discipline or level of writing, an important part of what you need to learn are the common genres of that discipline. It takes a while to do that. Look for successful samples, ask questions, ask for feedback on approaches and drafts (strategies all discussed below), and learn from the feedback your instructors have given you on your previous papers in that genre. One of the best ways to learn about a genre of academic writing that’s new to you is to analyze some successful papers written in that genre, samples that are appropriate for your level of study. You can ask your instructors whether they are willing to share some successful samples of that type of paper.
Since we have learned how to read like a writer, I want to read a paper with you like a instructor who gives a writing assignment. Yes, you imagine yourself giving an instruction for a student to write/create a work from an instructor’s perspective.
Exercise
Watch Annie Leonard’s “The Story of Bottled Water” to understand the final outcome of an assignment. And then, read its script with annotations on the same page.
When you listen to the beginning part of this video, what kind of questions do you think the author/creator has? Is tap water safe to drink? Is bottled water better than tap water? You can list questions that embark on this research. That is the main question that initiates this paper. Then, what does the author/creator offer to support her argument? She provides well-researched documents like cost comparison between tap and bottled water, the number of wasted water bottles, and the history of drink manufacture. Going further, the author/creator points out how bottled water ruins the environment from the excessive use of plastics to the failure to recycle them. This evidence strengthens her argument against bottled water. Her argument appears clear at the end: “That starts with making a personal commitment to not buy or drink bottled water unless the water in your community is truly unhealthy.”
Now imagine Annie Leonard had been asked to write a paper. Here is what I guess:
[Class type] For Environmental Studies. [Central Task] Write a 1000-word essay on one of the current environmental issues. [Basic Genre] This is an argumentative essay based on research. Make your central claim based on common questions related to that issue. Provide objective and scientific evidence to support your argument. [Format] Organize your essay according to academic writing conventions like introduction, body argument, and conclusion. In addition, create visual material to share with a larger group of audience.
Works Cited
“critical, adj.” OED Online, Oxford University Press, March 2021,
www.oed.com/view/Entry/44592. Accessed 9 March 2021.
Creative Commons Attributions
This chapter was edited by Josh Kesterson and Jewon Woo. It contains material from “Interpreting Writing Assignments from Your Courses,” which is a part of the UW-Madison’s Writer’s Handbook. This material is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
