As I've been thinking about how to incorporate the readings we've been doing into (a) paper assignment(s), I keep coming back to Lamb's idea of "responding." I think that the paper assignment she discusses using in her class (in which students work in pairs to write and respond to each others' writing) could potentially be useful in my classroom in a modified form.
This assignment could either be used as one of the three formal writing assignments or as a series of microthemes. In my modification of the assignment, I would ask students to write (independently) brief (2 pp) position papers on a topic we'd been discussing in class (immigration, Iraq, etc). I would then have them post these papers to the class discussion board. I would have the students choose one of their classmates' postings to respond to (with a limit of two responders per post; they could claim their post by posting a reply on the Discussion Board). I would have them write brief summaries of their classmate's argument to bring to class to discuss with that person, giving them a chance to see if/how they have misunderstood each other. They would then work from their classmate's post and their discussion with that classmate to write a response to their classmate's argument. This response could be Rogerian, but it would not be required to be Rogerian; the goal would be to demonstrate their understanding of their classmate's argument and explain their disagreement with it, using at least two outside sources to back up their argument. (We would have visited the library and discussed using databases, etc in preparation for this assignment).
I'm inclined to think that I won't use this as one of my three formal assignments, but I might use something along these lines in a shortened form to prepare my students for their final paper, which requires them to research and argue a position. Any thoughts?
2 comments:
I like this idea. I think it's surprisingly hard (both for me, and for Eng. 1K students) to summarize an argument--especially one with which you disagree. It seems like good practice for everyone involved, especially the opportunity for the original writer to say what they really meant (vs what they wrote).
I like this too- especially as an outgrowth of peer review, where students can get the idea that academia isn't necessarily all papers that exist in a vacuum, but also can be response and discussion. They might get this in a larger sense, but may not see how it can involve _them_.
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