A case study of the variety of writing assignments in an undergraduate English department

This article presents an investigation of the variation in writing assignments across undergraduate course-levels and sub-areas of a single university department. The central component of this study is an exhaustive analysis of the non-linguistic, situational characteristics of all writing assignments given over two years of undergraduate course offerings in the English department of a large public U.S. university. All writing assignments from a collection of syllabi representing all courses offered in the department were categorized using a bottom-up process informed by assignment descriptions, curricular documents, and two expert informants for each department sub-area, yielding a comprehensive taxonomy of writing assignment-types in the department. Assignment-types were identified by differentiating situational characteristics (central purpose, audience, personal nature, object of study, coherence, revision, time, assignment specifications, and medium). Differences in purposes and topics of common assignment-types across subareas are investigated using assignment prompts. An analysis of variation in the frequency and characteristics of assignment-types across course-levels and sub-areas reveals department-internal differences in the educational aims and uses of writing assignments. A comparison of the core purposes of common assignment-types with those of related studies attempts to identify purpose-sharing register-clusters that shed light on the nature of writing assignments at the undergraduate level. (C) 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.