RWS100 ASSIGNMENT TYPES
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RWS 100 Assignment Type 1
Producing an Account and Evaluating an Argument
As the student’s first paper in this field, this assignment emphasizes working with new rhetorical
terminology and concepts. The paper should identify what the student sees as the featured text’s
most important claims and analyze the ways in which elements of the text support this argument,
evaluating the extent to which the student sees these different elements as contributing to the
effectiveness of the argument for the intended audience. (The elements discussed will vary
depending on the text, but would likely include such possibilities as organization, subclaims/minor claims, data/evidence, and other rhetorical moves.)
RWS 100 Assignment Type 2
Gathering, Managing, and Using Outside Sources to Evaluate a Text
This assignment asks students to identify an author’s argument and evaluate how persuasive that
argument would be to a thoughtful and informed member of its intended audience by examining
that text in the light of other arguments made on that same topic. The goal here is not to write an
agree-disagree paper, but rather to consider how the additional sources can be used to reframe
the original text’s position. These outside sources will be used to extend, complicate, illustrate,
qualify, or challenge the argument, and this new understanding drawn on to evaluate the strength
of the original text.
Students may consider a variety of issues, such as how well the author uses evidence or
represents evidence gathered from other sources. (Thus, one potential set of sources might
include original sources used by the author or other texts using the same or similar evidence.)
They may also consider the extent to which the author has taken into account and responded to
different claims and arguments on the topic, particularly those represented by the additional
sources, or evidence that may seem not to fit with the author’s claims
RWS 100 Assignment Type 3
Analyzing and Evaluating Rhetorical Strategies
This assignment asks students to construct an account of one or more authors’ projects and
arguments, and explain the rhetorical strategies that the author(s)—and by extension other
writers—use to engage and persuade readers in thinking about their arguments. The paper should
identify the rhetorical strategies used, examine why they were chosen, and analyze the effects
they have on an audience. It should also discuss the effectiveness and relative strength of these
strategies.
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RWS 100 Assignment Type 4
Version 1: Assessing the Relative Strengths and Weaknesses of Multiple Texts1
This assignment asks students to assess the relative strengths and weaknesses of multiple
assigned texts, including discussion of rhetorical strategies, supporting evidence, audience, and
text structure. Instead of simply discussing each text separately, students will draw connections
between them, weaving a coherent account within their essays. Bearing the audience of each text
in mind, students will identify which most effectively achieves its desired end. The evaluation
should not merely reflect a personal position on the subject matter, but instead result from
rhetorical analysis and evaluation.
Successful essays will:
 Assess (evaluate) the relative strengths and weaknesses of each text’s argument and
supporting evidence.
 Analyze the rhetorical strategies and structure that each text employs.
 Demonstrate an awareness of the texts’ audiences that informs the overall analysis and
evaluation.
 Draw connections among the texts.
 Identify the text that most effectively achieves its desired end.
Successful essays will not:
 Merely summarize the four texts.
 Focus primarily on its author’s position on the subject at hand.
 Dedicate substantial attention to sources beyond the four assigned texts. This is not a
traditional “research paper.”
Version 2 Evaluating and Comparing Multiple Arguments2
This assignment asks students to write a formal academic essay in which they first summarize
the argument and describe the dominant rhetorical strategies used in author X’s text and then
compare the effectiveness of one or two additional arguments which support or argue against it.
To compare the effectiveness of the two arguments responding to X, students will describe the
arguments (what points they make and how they make them) of each of the texts, and then
explain the likelihood of their effectively persuading their intended audiences based on the
rhetorical strategies they employ and the ideologies or values they reflect.
Students may argue that the two arguments are effective in different ways, that one argument is
superior to the other, or that neither of the arguments is effective. Whatever they argue, they
should support their claims by explaining and supporting their points with textual evidence in the
form of quoted and paraphrased references to the texts in question.
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This prompt has been adapted from one generously provided by Danielle Egge.
This prompt has been adapted from one generously provided by Judith Annicchiarico.
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To evaluate the effectiveness of the arguments, students will make note of the strategies the
writers used to develop their arguments (for example, their claims and evidence, their use of
comparisons and cause/effect assumptions, their concessions and rebuttals, the tone of their
arguments, etc.) as well as strategies they could have used but didn’t (such as acknowledging
and conceding to opposing ideas, demonstrating respect for opposing viewpoints, citing
supporting evidence, etc.). Students will explain how these arguments likely appealed to their
audiences, focusing on why the strategies used (or avoided) likely would have or have not
persuaded readers.
Student papers should also note the underlying values/ideologies the arguments reflect, and
connect those to claims regarding how persuasive the arguments were likely to be. Students may
choose to argue that only readers whose values are reflected in either or both of the arguments
would be persuaded.
Successful papers will
1. Begin by introducing and putting the principal text into its historical context.
2. Then effectively summarize and describe the rhetorical strategies used in the principal
text.
3. After transitioning into the paper’s argument regarding the merits of the two auxiliary
texts, include thorough summaries and descriptions of the effective and/or ineffective
rhetorical strategies employed in the two responding texts.
4. Support claims about the responding texts with helpful text evidence.
5. Employ an effective structure that carefully guides the reader from one idea to the next
(likely a one-text-at-a-time comparison, but other options are available).
6. Address an academic audience familiar with Y in general, but unfamiliar with the
responding texts.
7. Be thoroughly edited so that sentences are readable and appropriate for an academic
audience.
8. Employ writing mechanics effectively.
Successful papers will not:
1. Emphasize other texts or sources of information regarding the three primary texts for this
paper. This is not a traditional “research paper.”
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RWS200 ASSIGNMENT TYPES
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RWS 200 Assignment Type 13
Articulating and Evaluating How an Argument Persuades a Specific Audience
Building on RWS 100, this assignment asks students to articulate a text’s argument and to
analyze and describe its elements. It goes one step further, now asking students to discern
elements of context embedded in the argument—the clues that suggest what the argument is
responding to, both in the sense of what has been written before it and in the sense that it is
written for an audience in a particular time and place – and to evaluate how effectively the
argument persuades this audience within this specific context.
RWS 200 Assignment Type 2
Using One Text as a Lens on Another
In this assignment, students will use concepts and arguments from a text that provides criteria by
which an argument can be evaluated, and they will analyze ways in which another text meets (or
fails to meet) these goals. In doing so, the student will evaluate the target text, not only for its
effectiveness for its intended audience, but also in the larger context of writing. (One approach
could be to discuss the ethics of the text’s topic. This could involve examining the ethics of
writing itself, including the use of evidence, of pathos, of considering outside viewpoints, etc.
What are the ethical obligations of a writer towards her or his audience, and to what extent has
this author met those obligations?)
RWS 200 Assignment Type 3
Analyzing the Context in which a Set of Arguments is Made
In this assignment students will examine a group of texts that consider a topic from a variety of
viewpoints. These texts may be the result of student research, or identified by the instructor, or a
combination of the instructor’s choice and student research. Students will “map out” a set of
positions and establish a context for understanding the issue under investigation. Students will
consider how major positions advanced in these texts relate to each other and evaluate the
persuasiveness of these positions.
RWS 200 Assignment Type 4
Advancing an Argument in the Contemporary Context
In this assignment, students will draw on their current life as the context from which to
understand and evaluate some of the texts explored in the third assignment. Students will select
texts in order to construct a context that allows them to “enter the conversation” and advance
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Assignment types 1 and 2 have been adapted from work generously provided by Jamie Madden
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their own claims. Students should evaluate the texts they use as precisely as possible, and
support this evaluation through reference to a specific audience (whether that be their class, or
some other identified audience). They should also craft their evaluation of source texts so as to
create a space for their own contribution to the issue being discussed.
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