More on Essay II

There was some confusion during Thursday's class about the goals of essay two. To clarify, let's compare this assignment to typical writing assignments from other college courses.

In general, college writing assignments ask the student to examine a text and respond to some instructor-supplied question or prompt. For example, in a political science course, students might respond to the question, "What are the most significant differences between U.S. student protests against the Vietnam War and 2014's Umbrella Revolution in Hong Kong?" Questions like this are intended to engage students in higher-order thinking (see the chart below), and rarely have a single correct answer.

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Rather than answering "correctly," the most effective responses use the question as a point of departure and proceed to make some original claim about the topic. In the example above, a dozen or more significant differences might exist between the two protests. Answering the question depends not on which difference the writer chooses, but on how effectively she supports that choice.

Additionally, in writing Essay II, you are not responding to an instructor question. Instead you must formulate a question yourself--one whose answer reveals some significant insight into your chosen topic. This is more difficult, because the comfortable framework of the instructor-supplied question is removed. The hope here is that you will engage in more original thinking and focus less on simply providing the answer you think the instructor is looking for.

One word of caution: In rare cases, writing assignments will call for a simple recitation of facts without any interpretation. To determine the instructor's expectations, pay careful attention to the verbs used in the prompt. For example, consider the following verbs: "list," "explain," "discuss," "analyze," "argue," "predict," "compare," "contrast," "summarize," "challenge," and "refute"; all imply very different expectations of how much and what kind of original interpretation is appropriate. In general, however, err on the side of higher-order approaches, as opposed to mere summary or recitation.