Reading assignments (again)

When I posted earlier this week, I was thinking of what types of things to assign my students to read, without thinking as much about how I would like students to read. So, going back to my previous post, I mentioned that I would like students to read some examples of student writing, perhaps even some of my old writing. Perhaps the reading assignment could be something like this:

Read the following paper written by an undergraduate. In a one-page paper, answer the following questions: What is the thesis? What is the argument (if it's different from the thesis)? What points does the author use to support his/her argument? What evidence does he/she use? What arguments can you use to counter the speaker's claims? Does the author anticipate these counterarguments? Is the argument convincing?

(This would likely be followed up with a short reflection paper in which students could describe what they have learned about their own writing from the assignment).

I like Bean's suggestion that we forbid students to highlight or underline passages. I think that this is a brilliant suggestion. I would hate it, but I think it's brilliant. I would love to do something with this. Maybe (again) if I were to have them start with student writing, they would not be as hesitant to criticize what the author is doing and I could use that as a gateway to criticizing published texts.

Another thing that Bean suggested that I really like is showing students my marked-up readings and marginalia. I've actually done this in the writing lab when I've talked about critical reading. I don't usually show them precisely what it says, but rather use it to show that they should be engaged with the reading and should mark what they find intriguing so that they can find it later. If we have a shared text, like we would in an English 1000 class, however, I think that it would be particularly helpful for them to see how I've marked the text. Yet, I don't want to impose my reading on them either, so I would want to stress that that is just my interpretation. It just happens to be the right one :-D