The occasion is an assignment
- Have you analysed the assignment brief?
- What does the teacher want to know about what you know?
As demonstrated by the Tools & Tips page on the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s writing centre page, there are many possible “Specific Writing Assignments or Contexts” or genres.
The Purdue OWL lists five different kinds of assignments that a student might encounter:
However, the contention here is that all academic assignments require that a student (or group in the case of group assignments) make a case.
It is also contended that almost all cases fall into one of two categories. They either ask the student to
- take a position on an contested point or
- attempt to better understand something that is not well understood by experts in the field
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