After grading the first reading responses, receiving several emails, and a long talk with the students in one of my classes, it seems that I'm not doing a good job of accurately explaining the goals of the assignments. A few people expressed concerns about the assignments being rather vague, and that is slightly intentional on my part. My goal as an instructor is to teach my students "how" to write... not "what" to write. A lot of times the questions people have about the assignments are more in like with the "what" and not the "how."
What do I mean by "how" and "what"? Say a student sends me a rough draft of an essay and they ask me how they can work on their organization. I will look over their essay and point out the places where they are switching topics or where ideas are misplaced. I usually encourage them to try writing an outline of how they think their paper should flow and then compare it to what they've written. Alternatively, if a student sends me an email and says they're having trouble coming up with an argument on the issue of same sex marriage, and asks me my personal thoughts I will respond with a question that helps them come up with their own ideas. So, when you as the student feel that I'm being vague in class what I'm really doing is forcing you to think for yourself. I'm here to give you the tools to write a great paper, but I will not tell you what to write.
A few people asked me if I would use this blog to write responses to the readings as well, and I don't think that's a good idea. If I write a response to the readings, everyone will try to mimick my response style and that's not my goal as your instructor. College is about learning to come up with your own ideas and back them up. Stop worrying about writing what I want to read, and work on writing what you think, but how I ask for it to be done.
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