WRITING AND SPEAKING IN FIRST-YEAR SEMINARS
“Legends Like Us” explored Chinese and Indian epics
Along with discussions, activities, and community-building exercises, writing is one of the major learning tools employed in Explorations seminars. Writing assignments are intended to help students clarify, organize, and deepen their thinking on the themes and issues examined in their seminars.
PLEASE NOTE: All students enrolled in Explorations seminars are responsible for approximately twenty-five pages of writing: fifteen pages of short assignments and an in-depth final paper or project.
Why do we emphasize writing so heavily? Because we believe that writing is a natural extension of thinking. Conceived of this way, writing becomes a vehicle for reflection and discovery. The types of writing assignments that have been most effective in first-year seminars are described below.
THE LIBRARY PAPER
“Library papers” are, as the name implies, assignments that require outside research. They are longer papers (ten pages) which give each student a vehicle for coming to terms with the scope of your course’s themes and materials.
Library papers are intended to provide your students with some hands-on research experience and with training in how to make appropriate use of their research. As such, the library paper requires properly formatted footnotes and bibliographies.
Thus, a library paper exploring the concept of viral videos — if done well — would require the student researching and writing it to do the following.
- Search the Web for analyses by media critics
- Use indexes in the library to locate articles written by media studies scholars who are attempting to place this phenomenon in a cultural context
- Search for historical articles that would enable the student to find precursors to viral videos.
A Note on Appropriate Use of the Web for Research. In order for materials found on a web site to be considered reliable secondary sources, they must be attributable to an author or organization whose authority is widely recognized.
For example, a review of Shutter Island by Philip French on The Guardian website would be perfectly acceptable, while one at screenrant.com may not be. (By contrast, a paper on the Web’s proliferation of amateur reviews for books, films, plays, or CDs could use screenrant and other sites like it as primary sources, materials to be analyzed, not to aid your analysis.)
Go to Tisch Library’s website, click Get Help, and then Help with Citations.
IN-CLASS WRITING
Along with the outside assignments which your students will do, the use of “quick,” spur-of-the-moment writing at points during a class can be an effective way to focus students, to get them to think a little more deeply about an issue.
Say you were discussing the issues raised in an article on the latest debate about global warming.
- After twenty minutes or so, you could ask everyone to take five minutes and write a brief critique of the federal government’s policies.
- Then have volunteers read their passages and answer questions from you and from the other seminar members.
- You might then ask the class to write about how they would respond to the current debate if they were environmental officials in California.
THE REACTION PAPER
The principal form of outside writing for students in Explorations is the “reaction paper.” Generally speaking, reaction papers are short essays (one or two pages), written and handed in every week, which enable students to articulate their personal response to a reading, film, guest speaker, or class activity (as opposed to using secondary sources).
While such assignments seem straightforward enough, in fact many entering students have difficulty with short papers unless you provide them with ways to narrow their focus. Given no instructions other than “what did you think,” they often end up rambling.
The important thing is to get your students to focus on concrete elements when engaging with a text: descriptive passages, pieces of dialogue, or well-made points that engendered their responses in the first place. For example, a reaction-paper assignment based on reading the book, Invisible Man, could ask students to respond to one of the following set of questions.
- The use of first-person narration is essential to the novel’s meaning. Agree or disagree? Support your position with specific references to the text.
- What does this novel have to say about race and racism in America?
- Is Invisible Man the “great American novel?” What in the book supports your position?
The Course Journal. One variation on reaction writing is having each student keep a “course journal”
in which he or she records responses to aspects of each week’s presentations.
If you decide to use course journals, make it clear that they are intended to be devices for analytical reflection. Further, you should collect and read them each week.
EXPLORATORY PAPERS
A valuable alternative to the reaction paper is the “exploratory paper.” While still short (two-to-four pages), exploratory papers are expected to be more thoughtful and to exhibit more depth than reaction papers.
Rather than being grounded in an initial response to a given text, film, or talk, exploratory papers ask students to take into account such elements as class discussions and critical readings.
For example, an exploratory paper assignment based on studying kid’s television might ask students to do the following.
- Compare the uses of animation in Arthur to that in Dora the Explorer. Why do you think animation seems to be such a potent element in kid’s TV? Incorporate what at least one film reviewer had to say about this issue.
“DIALOGUE” PAPERS
A second kind of extended short paper involves having students construct an argument that addresses an issue or problem by creating a dramatic scene in which people with opposing points of view talk to one another.
The key here is to think in terms of a script, a form of writing which incorporates both the “lines” that specific speakers are going to say and the order in which they are going to say them.
Thinking still about kid’s media, a dialogue-paper assignment might ask students to:
- Script a scene in which Walt Disney and Steven Spielberg debate the best way to tell stories to kids.
PUBLIC SPEAKING
A participatory learning atmosphere should, by its very nature, offer many opportunities for speaking. The importance of learning to be comfortable speaking in front of a group has become an important skill.
In fact, in a recent survey of Tufts alumni, developing such skills ranks first on a list of things that alums wish they had done while in college.
Having students report to the class provides a public-speaking opportunity that, given the fact that they are speaking about their own personal “take” on something, should be relatively stress free.