“How do instructors come up with these assignments?” Assignments, like other kinds of writing, reflect particular rhetorical contexts that vary from instructor to instructor, and they change over time. The assignment for an 1892 college writing contest was to write an essay “On Coal”; in research conducted for this textbook in the 1980s, the most common writing assignment was a personal narrative. Assignments also reflect changing expectations for college students and the needs of society. 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. It’s no surprise, then, that 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. (Also see Analyzing Arguments and Constructing Arguments.)