Two Activities

Many of the ideas for student activities in Bean and Curzan & Damour are quite helpful. Freewriting seems to be an ideal way of encouraging discussion, and the classroom debate seems like an ideal way to prepare them for a "taking a stance" essay.

For my first assignment, which is to take an essay from the class text and analyze the argument, considering the writer's motives and authority, I thought that it might help to have a small group activity by which the students would look at editorials from newspaper opinion columns. Before using terminology like "analysis" and "authority", I would have them look at the articles and simply ask questions about it. Like what is the editorial about, what is the author trying to say, do you agree or disagree with the author.

For a paper that will have more of a take a stance, the dialogue or argumentative script activity seems like a great idea. It would be similar to the classroom debate, but could just be a short writing assignment that the students individually do as well, or could even be done in small groups of, say, four students where two students write the dialogue for one side of the argument, and two students take the other side.