TALKING THE TALK

“How do instructors come up with these assignments?” Assignments, like other kinds of writing, reflect particular rhetorical contexts that vary from instructor to instructor. Assignments also change over time. The assignment for an 1892 college writing contest was to write an essay “on coal.” In the twentieth century, many college writing assignments asked students to write about their own experiences; in research conducted for this textbook in the 1980s, the most common writing assignment was a personal narrative. As expectations for college students—and the needs of society—change over time, assignments also change. Competing effectively in today’s workforce calls for high-level thinking, for being able to argue convincingly, and for knowing how to do the research necessary to support a claim—so it’s no surprise that college writing courses today give students assignments that allow them to develop such skills. A recent study of first-year college writing in the United States found that by far the most common assignment today asks students to compose a researched argument. (See Chapters 12–14.)