I'm vacillating with regards to writing assignments. My initial thought was to bring in classic examples of well-written professional prose, particularly those pieces which are lively, well-written, and intellectually compelling. Yet, for the last few weeks, I've been torn about this issue. For example, neither of the pieces that I brought in for our argumentation show and tell follow the trajectory of a well-reasoned college essay. That's not to say that I don't want my students to be able to write like Zora Neale Hurston, for example, but rather that they will need to learn to write thesis-centered academic essays.
I think that I would like to start them off with student-written essays, maybe even some of my really awful ones (though I might not tell them they're mine at first, since I will want them to be unreserved). Whether the papers they examine are mine or someone else's, I want them to see what academic writing looks like in both its successful and its unsuccessful states.
After we trudge through some of these more basic example-driven texts, however, I want to guide them into provocative popular argumentative pieces. Hurston is one example. A few others I've tossed around are, "Black Men in Public Spaces" by Brent Staples, "The Harmful Myth of Asian Superiority" by Ronald Takaki, "Mother Tongue" by Amy Tan, "Aria" by Richard Rodriguez, and other texts that confront stereotypes and will prompt discussion (and paper ideas).
There are some written forms that I want to expose them to (humor, satire, letters, poems, etc) but will not spend a whole lot of time on, but I think I'll save that discussion for later.
--Discussion Hog
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4 comments:
How you can possibly hog this discussion is a mystery to me!
Are you really going to give your students your own (old) papers? What a great idea! That thought never occurred to me but it's brilliant! Not only can you evade all concerns about anonymity and permission, but you can also let your students discover and internalize the idea that everyone (including their teachers) have to LEARN how to write an essay. Can I steal your idea?
I also think bringing in your own old assignments is a good idea. For the first paper, I also intend to bring in the paper I wrote in response to the assignment. I'm debating writing my own responses to the other paper assignments, as well.
You're more than welcome to steal my idea, though it isn't really my idea, per se.
I've kept all my old papers for exactly this purpose. Even better, I recently opened up a box that has some draft versions, so I can show them what revision looks like (my comp equivalent was insanely hard).
And this is the other good reason for us to have written papers for our assignment- so we can show sample versions to our classes. But you knew that.
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