Understanding your writing assignment involves recognizing that different tasks require different rhetorical styles. Essentially, your topic, purpose, and audience will shape your tone, structure, and strategies.
This page offers tips and strategies to help you start writing. The assignment type you have will guide your structure, tone, and use of sources.
Every communication or writing task involves a rhetorical situation, even in nonacademic settings. The decision you make about your communication or writing are in the following areas:
In different types of writing, different rhetorical styles may be necessary or required. Rhetorical styles are your methods of developing your discussion or argument. At different points in the text of a written paper or presentation, different rhetorical styles can be employed. The main types of rhetorical styles suitable in community college writing assignments are:
Even if your professor does not specifically label an assignment as following a certain rhetorical style, being familiar with these types of writing will help you make the appropriate decisions for your particular assignment. Even if you were not previously familiar with these styles, you were likely using some in the natural course of your writing based on previous reading and educational experiences.
In this section, the common types of assignments are defined with associated rhetorical styles. For more information on rhetorical styles, please visit Excelsior University's Online Writing Lab guide dedicated to Rhetorical Styles. Each section also provides links to sample essays. For additional sample essays, view the Norton Little Seagull Handbook.
Reflection papers focus on your personal response and do not require outside sources, except for reflecting on assigned readings. Your original ideas, experiences, and words are central. This may just be a first step in a semester-long project, that may eventually build to including outside information sources.
Proposal, Outline, Annotated Bibliography
In some writing component courses, written essays may be scaled to teach the writing process or to allow the student time to develop a topic throughout the semester. A proposal outlines your plan for research, including your thesis and sources. An outline plans your paper's structure using bullet points or lists. Finally, an annotated bibliography lists your sources with summaries that relate the source to your topic.
Next to an argumentative assignment, this is one of the most common community college research assignments, requiring research and the synthesis of information. Informative assignments, also known as expository writing or reports, require research and synthesis of information. The writer does not take a position but writes from a neutral and objective standpoint. Evidence from outsides sources provide credibility and authority. Not all informative assignments need to be in the form of a research paper, but can be in the form of a poster presentation or speech. A process speech or paper is another type of informative assignment, but generally requires less indepth research. Within this type of writing assignment, a writer will describe how to accomplish a task using step-by-step instructions and details. A process paper can cover many types of activities from simple to complex, including applying for a job, repairing the brakes on a car, baking a cake, house training a dog, or purchasing a car.
Analytical papers require you to explore a topic deeply, connecting ideas and identifying relationships. These papers might ask you to respond to questions like "who, why, or how." Cause and effect assignments ask you to find the relationship between an action, situation, or event and its related outcomes or situation. Finally, compare and contrast essays go beyond an informative paper by asking the writer to look at two or more topics, ideas, or events to identify significant similarities and differences.
Persuasive papers argue a position on a topic, using evidence and logic to persuade the reader. They require pre-research and a balanced view, addressing counterarguments. Argumentative papers allow the student to argue a perspective on a topic or issue by presenting a balanced view, providing evidence from outsides sources, and using logic, facts, and reasoning. Research focuses on debating multiple sides and addresses counter arguments. Position papers are similar to argumentative papers, but focus on a particular position and persuade the reader of a specific stance. Problem and Solution papers also involve persuading readers of a perspective by outlining and presenting a problem and advocating for a particular solution.
In persuasive writing, students need to be cautious when they feel very passionate about a topic, as it can make it difficult to research, maintain emotional distance, and stay within the boundaries of the assignment prompt.
At this point in your learning, it might be beneficial to see the various rhetorical styles in action within an actual college level paper. Below is a PDF document of an example assignment, which points out various rhetorical styles within the text.
Image of woman presenting and the Rhetorical Style map courtesy of Kristen Cook, created in Canva.
