freshman composition assignments

Faculty Resources

Assignments.

The assignments in this course are openly licensed, and are available as-is, or can be modified to suit your students’ needs.

If you import this course into your learning management system (Blackboard, Canvas, etc.), the assignments will automatically be loaded into the assignment tool. These assignments and quizzes come pre-loaded with specific assigned point values. We recommend changing the point values to match your course design .

This course includes a series of assignments associated with most modules, as well as essay assignments that can be included in the course as you see fit. Some instructors assign multiple rhetorical styles, while others scaffold just one or two large essays throughout the course. For this reason, the essay assignments are listed at the front of the course and can be easily moved into the appropriate places within the LMS. The different rhetorical style essays are each split into at least two parts, with one for prewriting and one for the final draft.  They could also be combined into one assignment or split into several smaller assignments; for example, you could divide each essay into a prewriting, drafting, and final draft stage (which is how the argument essay is currently organized).

The “Writing Process—Revising and Proofreading” module also includes a discussion assignment that has students peer review whichever essay is assigned during that module ( Discussion: CARES Peer Review).

• Narrative Essay
• Compare/Contrast
• Illustration Essay
• Cause and Effect Essay
• Argument Essay

The optional “Essay Reflection” Assignment can also be paired with any of the rhetorical style essays listed above.

The assignments can also be broken down into smaller steps or combined/simplified as desired. Remember, these can be deleted, modified, or replaced within your LMS to meet the needs of your students.

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Teaching Resources for Writing Instructors

One of the challenges of current staffing practices for college writing courses in my institutions is the sometimes last-minute assignment of multiple course preparations, additional sections, or new preparations that instructors can receive due to fluctuation in enrollments or inaccurate curricular planning. On this page, we offer direction to some teaching and learning sources that provide models of syllabi and assignments as well as heuristics and guidelines that can help instructors with the planning process that goes into teaching college writing. We also include some open-access materials that can be assigned in courses as student reading or that support course development.

Syllabi and Assignment Models or Collections of First-Year Writing Materials

• Council on Basic Writing Resource Sharing Website
• University of Georgia’s Syllabus System (browsable by course)
• Campus Compact Syllabus Archives (select ‘writing’) for courses using engaged learning
• Florida State Teachers’ Guide to the College Composition Program (including sample syllabi)
• Printable Handouts for students on Writing Topics , Center for the Study and Teaching of Writing, Ohio University

Writing and Research Assignment Banks

• CORA: Community of Online Research Assignments : An Open Access Resource for Faculty and Librarians: A searchable bank of assignments for developing and assessing information literacy. 
• Effective Research Assignments , Oregon State University Libraries (audience, exploration and topic selection, reading and evaluation)
• Creating Successful Research Skills Assignments , Penn State Libraries
• Alternative Research Assignments , San Diego State University Libraries
• Alternative Assignments to Term Papers , Lawrence University
• Writing Assignment Ideas for Specific Purposes (to learn, to communicate, Hobart and William Smith colleges
• College Composition Instructor Guide , Three Rivers Community College, for first-year writing (including syllabus checklist and learning module ideas)
• Effective Writing Assignments , Lehman College
• Sample Writing Assignments for first and second-semester writing courses (narrative, summary, rhetorical analysis, synthesis, literary analysis) from Stephen Austin University
• Sample Writing Assignments (literacy narrative, ethnography, new media, visual analysis), Georgia State University
• Resources for Writing Teachers , George Mason University

Tutorials and Guidance for Writing Class Planning and Management

• Colorado State’s Teaching Activities Bank : Discussion, Peer review, working with sources
• Teaching College Composition: A Practical Guide for New Instructors (excerpts through Google books)
• Dartmouth’s Principles for Syllabus Design
• Sample Chapter from NCTE’s book “ Sequencing Writing Projects in Any Composition Class .” In Strategies for Teaching First-Year Composition
• Designing Writing Assignments , by Traci Gardner (open-access e-book)
• First Time Up: An Insider’s Guide for New Composition Teachers , Brock Dethier (open-access e-book)
• Bedford Bibliography for Teachers of Writing , (open-access e-book)
• The Teaching Professor Special Report, “ Keys to Designing Effective Writing and Research Assignments ,” principles and guidelines for developing writing assignments.

Open Source Sites

These are open-access educational materials that can be useful for instructors who are assigned courses with little time to advance order traditional textbooks.

• Writing Spaces : An open-Textbook Project for college-level writing studies courses.
• Writing Commons : Writing Commons is a free, online textbook. As outlined by the Site Map, Writing Common provides a comprehensive introduction to academic writing
• Open-Textbooks: English and Composition , full-access textbooks available online
• University of North Carolina Supporting Materials for a College Writing Course
• Merlot: Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching , a repository of learning objects and activities for use in English and Writing Courses
• Basic Writing
• English 101: Composition I
• English 102: Composition II

Bibliographies on Composition Teaching Topics

• Teaching in an Accelerated Learning Program Context

Professional Resources from Publishers (at no cost)

Bedford St. Martin’s

• Bibliographies
• Background Readings
• The Bedford/St. Martin’s Series in Rhetoric and Composition
• Workshop and Symposia

Guides for Writing Teachers in Specific Curricula or Contexts

• Teaching Composition in the Two-Year College: Background Readings
• Informed Choices: A Guide for Teachers of College Writing
• The Bedford Bibliography for Teachers of Basic Writing
• Developmental Education: Readings on Its Past, Present, and Future
• Teaching Developmental Reading: Historical, Theoretical, and Practical Background Readings
• The St. Martin’s Guide to Teaching Writing
• Multimodal Composition: Teaching Developmental Writing
• Background Readings: A Critical Sourcebook
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• Find a Position Statement
• Learn about Committees
• Read Studies in Writing & Rhetoric Books
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Purdue Online Writing Lab Purdue OWL® College of Liberal Arts

Common Writing Assignments

Welcome to the Purdue OWL

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Copyright ©1995-2018 by The Writing Lab & The OWL at Purdue and Purdue University. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, reproduced, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without permission. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our terms and conditions of fair use.

These OWL resources will help you understand and complete specific types of writing assignments, such as annotated bibliographies, book reports, and research papers. This section also includes resources on writing academic proposals for conference presentations, journal articles, and books.

Understanding Writing Assignments

This resource describes some steps you can take to better understand the requirements of your writing assignments. This resource works for either in-class, teacher-led discussion or for personal use.

Argument Papers

This resource outlines the generally accepted structure for introductions, body paragraphs, and conclusions in an academic argument paper. Keep in mind that this resource contains guidelines and not strict rules about organization. Your structure needs to be flexible enough to meet the requirements of your purpose and audience.

Research Papers

This handout provides detailed information about how to write research papers including discussing research papers as a genre, choosing topics, and finding sources.

Exploratory Papers

This resource will help you with exploratory/inquiry essay assignments.

Annotated Bibliographies

This handout provides information about annotated bibliographies in MLA, APA, and CMS.

Book Report

This resource discusses book reports and how to write them.

Definitions

This handout provides suggestions and examples for writing definitions.

Essays for Exams

While most OWL resources recommend a longer writing process (start early, revise often, conduct thorough research, etc.), sometimes you just have to write quickly in test situations. However, these exam essays can be no less important pieces of writing than research papers because they can influence final grades for courses, and/or they can mean the difference between getting into an academic program (GED, SAT, GRE). To that end, this resource will help you prepare and write essays for exams.

Book Review

This resource discusses book reviews and how to write them.

Academic Proposals

This resource will help undergraduate, graduate, and professional scholars write proposals for academic conferences, articles, and books.

In this section

Subsections.