More Clarification

Some of the questions following Tuesday's class suggest a need for still more clarification on the assignment instructions.

The original instructions read as follows:

This assignment asks you to...examine a contemporary text, draw a suitably precise (and arguable) conclusion about it, and convincingly support that conclusion with specific examples.

These instructions are deliberately open ended in order to encourage original thinking about your topic (see the previous post). We want to eliminate the model of students providing a "correct" answer to an instructor question. Instead, you, the student, are the one posing the question.

Everyone has chosen a text. Your task now is to discover what matters to you about your text. If you feel lost without more structure, you might try the following steps, adapted from Section A of the handbook):

• Examine your text (see the guidelines on page 68).
• Sketch a brief outline.
• Write a brief summary.
• Identify as many subtopics as possible (you've done assignments to get you started on this). If you're having a hard time, do some online searching to see what others have written about in relation to your topic.
• Decide what subtopic(s) you care most about. What do you have to say about your topic? What aspects of the topic do you feel most strongly about? Is there some aspect of the topic you don't understand? Can you identify some misconception about your topic that you would like to correct?
•  Begin to form a working thesis. See the guidelines on pages 373 and 17 for some useful tips.

I hope this helps. Don't forget to see me if you're still feeling confused.