Analyze Your Assignment

• Look for statements about your readers. Your assignment might provide information about the characteristics of your readers, such as their ages, their educational backgrounds, and their interests. You might be asked, for example, to address the members of a particular academic discipline. If so, identify genres that are commonly used in that discipline.
• Look for statements about your purpose and role. Most assignments offer guidance on what you should attempt to accomplish. Words such as inform and report, for example, suggest that your purpose is to write an informative document. In contrast, words such as convince and persuade indicate that you should write an argumentative document. Although you’ll find that some genres, such as essays, articles, and blog posts, can be used to accomplish both purposes, some are better suited to one purpose than to another. Opinion columns, for example, are typically used to advocate an argumentative position, while reports are used primarily to inform.
• Look for statements about your context. If your assignment indicates the format in which your document should be submitted, use that information to help determine which genres might be appropriate. If you are expected to submit a printed document, for example, you’ll be more likely to choose an essay, a report, or an article than a Web page, a blog post, or a multimodal essay. Look as well for any statements that indicate where your document might be read, such as references to particular types of publications (newspapers, magazines, Web sites, and so on).
• Look for statements about limitations. Many assignments provide information about word limits or page length. You’ll also find guidance about due dates, deadlines for rough drafts or activities such as the development of working bibliographies or outlines, and the type of documentation system you should use. Use this information to choose your genre. Length limitations are particularly useful, since many genres would simply be too long for an assignment that asked for a document of no more than 500 words. Similarly, some documents, such as a multimodal essay, would be difficult to complete in a short period of time.