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Most assignments we assign in a writing class are created for
the sole reader—the teacher. However, there is no reason students should
write only for their teacher. Sharing their ideas with a broader
audience can increase student motivation, encourage them to further
develop their writing skills, help them connect and interact with many
people from all over the world, and in some cases, even assist someone.
I’d like to share a few examples of projects that you can implement in
your course to help your students write for an audience beyond the
classroom.
Review of a Product
Online product reviews are very common. Unbiased and
well-written reviews can be very helpful to users, byers, and customers.
The purpose of product reviews is simple: to help people decide if the
product is effective and worth purchasing. As a teacher, you can create a
course assignment in which students would write an online review of a
product they are familiar with. To do that, students would have to
examine the product carefully, perhaps even take notes on its positive
and negative attributes, then think of why they initially bought the
product and what they expected to get out of it. They could also
consider answering these questions: Did this product satisfy your
expectations? Why or why not? Would you recommend that others buy the
same product?
To prepare students to write their review, you would develop
several classroom activities and tasks helping them become familiar with
genre characteristics of product reviews, and organizational and
stylistic features. Students would also learn how to express their
informed opinion about the selected product and how to contextualize the
review within their experience.
Creating a Wikipedia Entry
Creating a Wikipedia entry would be an excellent assignment for
an advanced-level writing course in which students are working on
academic research skills. In addition to rhetorical, organizational, and
research skills, which you would need to cover in class to help
students compose their article, you can also use the following (or other
available online) materials in order to guide the students through the
process:
I also suggest that you encourage students to write on a topic
they are familiar with or feel passionate about. This project can also
be done as a group assignment.
Blog on English Learning (or Any Other Topic)
Blogs are a very popular writing genre, and hundreds of blogs
are being written every day for various reasons, including establishing
yourself as a professional; attracting potential customers and clients;
exchanging ideas, thoughts, materials, and experiences; and meeting new
people. In a writing course, a blog assignment can be a great
opportunity for students to practice their writing skills, express
themselves in a written form, share their experiences with others, and
of course, reach to the readers beyond the classroom.
This assignment can be developed in many different ways, but
the main point is blog regularity. In other words, students have to
produce a series of entries in order to complete this project.
Therefore, you should encourage them to write on something that they
deal with on a daily basis. For example, they can write a blog on their
English language learning experiences, or intercultural experiences (if
applicable), or provide tips to other language learners or students
studying abroad, or simply share their thoughts about a certain concept
or problem. Options are numerous! You can also ask all students in the
class to respond to each other’s blogs to establish a sense of
interaction and further motivate the writers.
Writing an Analysis of a YouTube Video
You can also ask students to write a constructive and detailed
analysis of a YouTube video and post it as a comment. Students would
learn how to objectively evaluate a video by considering its positive
and negative features. They would also learn about various rhetorical
skills, including summarizing, forming, and supporting an argument;
providing counterclaims and supporting them with examples; analyzing and
evaluating; and proposing.
Responding to a Comment on a Video/Article
Instead of writing a detailed evaluation of a video, students
can respond to a comment that other people provided on a video, article,
or blog entry. Because students’ responses would probably be less
detailed than full-fledged analyses, you can require several responses
on various pieces (all of the same genre or various genres). Students
would learn such rhetorical skills as arguing, providing counterclaims
and supporting them with evidence, and expressing their
opinion.
Sharing a Recipe on a Cooking Website
There are lots of cooking websites out there, where people
share their favorite recipes and exchange culinary skills. This could be
a great opportunity for students to share with the whole world
something that they enjoy cooking or/and eating. From a rhetorical
perspective, sharing a recipe is a chance for students to learn how to
describe a process in a succinct yet clear manner. You can also
encourage students to take pictures to supplement their step-by-step
descriptions.
Alternatively, as a class, you can create a class cooking blog,
where all students would post their favorite recipes. Finally, students
can also create their own cooking blogs if they wish. They can be also
thematic, for example, how to cook Chinese food from local ingredients
(if you are teaching a class outside of China). Options are numerous!
One important thing to remember, though: The descriptions of the recipes
have to be students’ own, not copied from other websites or other
electronic or materials.
School Newsletter
Finally, if your students don’t feel comfortable sharing their
writing with the entire world, there are certainly other options of a
smaller scale, for example, a school newsletter. Students could describe
their intercultural or language-learning experiences, for example, or
share thoughts about current events or report on participating in events
and activities sponsored by the local community.
NOTE: This article first appeared in the TESOL Blog, 10 November 2017.
Elena Shvidko is an assistant professor at Utah
State University. Her research interests include interpersonal aspects
of language teaching, embodied interaction in the classroom, second
language writing, and teacher professional development. | 
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