Papers: Models and Exercises

Students aren’t particularly fond of the research paper, but they need to learn how to do research and report it to be successful academics. When they are being asked to do something that is “hard” for them, it can be useful to maximize the use they get out of the project.

When my students are doing the research for their long papers (on a controversial issue) I require that they find sources both for the side they agree with and against that side. I want them to understand the entire issue and not just the side that they agree with.

Then the question becomes how to have them use both sides so that they actually see the strength of the opposition’s arguments.

Possibilities:

• Have them write the research paper from the side they disagree with first, then write the one they agree with.
• Allow them to write the research paper they agree with, then have them compose a short refutation, as if from the opposing side, arguing against one of the points they made in their paper.
• Have the first paper be a compare/contrast on the arguments on both sides of the topic. For example, “Global warming may or may not be caused by humans.” and then present the arguments from their research.

These multiple exercises, or even combinations thereof, allow the students to become more familiar with the arguments on both sides and encourage them to understand their side’s arguments better.

The photo is from Ricko on flickr.

My notes to myself:
Maybe when we are discussing poetry, I could ask them what strategies their teachers have given them for reading poetry. We could discuss how useful they have found those to be. Maybe I could give them some of my strategies for reading poetry, particularly discussing how I chose the poems for the class and why. (I do some of that anyway, but maybe we could shut our syllabi, open the book, and have the students skim for possible poems to read. I might find some other good ones that way. It would also be a way to show what “non-prepared” reading of a poem might look like.)

Homework: Find/choose a patriotic song/poem. Research the history of the poem and the author. Do a 5-minute reading and introduction to the poem. (<4 min = -20, >6 min = -20)
Poem suggestions:
“Barbara Frietchie” John Greenleaf Whittier
“Ragged Old Flag” by Johnny Cash
“America the Beautiful” by Katherine Lee Bates
“America for Me” by Henry Van Dyke

“Proud to be an American” by Lee Greenwood
“Battle Hymn of the Republic” Julia Ward Howe
“When Johnny Comes Marching Home” (Civil War song)
“Stars and Stripes Forever” by John Phillips Sousa
“You’re a Grand Old Flag” George M. Cohan
“Ballad of the Green Beret” SSG Barry Sadler and Robin Moore
“I, Too, (sing America)” Langston Hughes
“Old Ironsides” Oliver Wendell Holmes
“O Captain, My Captain!” Walt Whitman
“The Concord Hymn” Ralph Waldo Emerson
“God Bless America” Irving Berlin
“A Nation’s Strength” Ralph Waldo Emerson
“America (My Country Tis of Thee)” Samuel Francis Smith
“Have You Forgotten?” Darryl Worley
“The Marine’s Hymn”
“The Army Goes Rolling Along” (either the 1917 or 1956 version)
“Anchors Aweigh” Charles A. Zimmerman
“The US Air Force” Capt. Robert Crawford
“Semper Paratus” Captain Francis Saltus Van Boskerck
“Eternal Father, Strong to Save”
“The New Colosus” Emma Lazarus
“Paul Revere’s Ride” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (This is a long poem. You need to choose only a section of it to read aloud.)

Poetry paper:
Definition/illustration
Look up definitions of family, love, patriotism. Write a definition paragraph.
Then use three poems to illustrate the definition. One paragraph each.

Rules for summarizing:
1. Only summarize what the author said. Do not tell what you thought about the story.
2. A summary is fairly short. Keep it to ten to twenty-two sentences or between two hundred and four hundred words. The shorter the original story is the shorter your summary should be.
3. Cover only the main ideas and important supporting details. I’ve read the story. I’m trying to make sure you did too.
4. Begin with the name of the story and the author. For example:
In the story “Dead Man’s Path” by Chinua Achebe….
5. No quotes!

This was a short assignment I gave in lieu of a quiz on the literature reading that had been homework.

I often had students write narrative or reflective essays based on their lives. Here is one list of topics from the early 90s.

1. Draw on the best learning experiences you have had in several classes to analyze your own learning style. Do you acquire knowledge best by experience, observation, study, visual examples, or some other way?

2. Write an essay about some pastime that used to be a very big part of your life but which you have since outgrown. What was it about the pastime that was so compelling, and why have you fallen away from it? Are there times when you miss it or feel that you have lost something you can’t get back?

3. Eric Fromm, a psychiatrist and social critic, says that every generation defines attractiveness in males and females differently. From your observation of old movies, photographs, and advertisements from your parents’ generation, describe the differences between you generation’s definition of attractiveness in males and/or females and your parents’.

4. What is the key as you see it to getting along with other people? Illustrate your answer with personal experiences.

5. What methods do you use to cope with problems and stress in different situations, such as the death of someone close, adjusting to a new environment, having too much to do in too little time, etc.? Comment on the kinds of situations you have faced this semester, why you use the methods you do, and how they help you.

6. Discuss the ways in which qualities of your parents’ personalities appear in your own.

The papers I most remember from these topics were those that dealt with number six.

Getting students involved with each other and the college makes it more likely for them to stay in school. I knew this way back in the dark ages (1992). Here is a shortened list of journal topics for one composition course. The list was specifically created to try to get the students involved on campus.

1. Attend or view one of the following and discuss what occurred and what effect this event might have on the history/tradition of the college.
There were four events listed including: Faculty Publication Display, Library Display Case

2. Interview someone on campus who either attended or worked at the college before 1972. Ask them to tell you how the school has changed. Record their responses.
The college had a lot of older faculty. I was asking them to find someone who had been there for twenty years. Some of the schools I have taught at since aren’t that old.

3. Do one of the following:
•Interview an older family member and ask about the oldest family anecdote they know. Write it down. If it is very short, ask for two or three.

•Find out if there are any old recipes or games which have been passed down more than two generations in your family. If there are, write one down along with any history about it you can discover.

•Write down the courtship or early marriage story of an older (50+) couple who have been important in your life.

I didn’t want to limit them only to the school.

4. Interview someone in the old folks home attached to the college who attended the college. Write up the interview.

Most people in the old folks home did attend the college. Or at least their spouse did.

An earlier journal topic list was for a written introduction of themselves that was read/presented to the class.

Suggestions for methodology:
•song
•poem
•letter
•essay
•wanted poster, with sufficient verbal detail to facilitate recognition
•description of your dream home, if it includes the whys
•resume
•written collage
•newspaper article for the college newspaper
•your funeral eulogy
•your family’s favorite story/stories about you
•comic explanation of how you ended up at our college
•a riddle about some personally important item you brought to college with you
•a shopping list of what you would purchase if given a million dollars
•a description of your favorite place to go or thing to do in high school
•chapter titles and the front cover blurb from your autobiography
•family history depicting scandalous or strange ancestors
•the best thing that has happened in your life and what impact it has had on you
•your three favorite songs, poems, stories, novels, magazines and the impact each has had on you
•how your life would have been different if you had been born the opposite gender
•five things people (generally family members) tell strangers about you that embarrass you
•least and most favorite high school teacher, class
•something you have learned about yourself in the last six months
•the most important goal and why it is most important
•list of your favorite somethings (Remember, this has to be interesting!)
•things you never want to do
•explanation of one of your favorite songs and why you think it is a good one

Our students often see us read poetry that we have written papers on, studied in grad school, memorized as undergrads. They think that the ability to read poems is innate in English teachers and, therefore, far beyond them.

One exercise I have done in Comp and Lit (2nd semester freshman) is assign the students to go through the anthology and pick out a poem that is not on the reading list. I tell them that I will read the poems in class and model how to read a poem.

Most of the students pick different poems, so there is variety.

If they picked a poem I know, I say that, give a brief intro, and then go on to the next poem.

But it has been interesting. One guy suggested a poem by William Carlos Williams, not my favorite because of “Use of Force” and “Just to Say.” (Though I love his newspaper poems now, after ALA in Boston in May.) So I looked at the poem and was trying to figure it out/follow it. The student who picked it had seen there was an explanation of the poem and he had read that. When I got stuck on my interpretation, he referred to the book and explained the poem to the class. Whoo hoo!

That’s what modeling poetry does. It takes away our “expert” standing on everything, while still ceding us expert standing on reading literature, and the students get to see how even a professor can stall on a poem’s interpretation.

This last semester in Composition and Literature (second semester of freshman comp), I introduced poetry. I had a handout. I explained the handout. I went through a couple of poems fairly quickly to show how the information on the handout could actually be applied to real poetry.

Then I had the students go print the lyrics of one of their favorite songs. (I did say no extremely foul language and it must be appropriate for the university so that neither they nor I would be embarrassed if some VIP happened to show up in class.)

I told them to make four copies.

When they came to class, I had everyone turn in one copy. Then I had them trade copies with three other people. Everyone was reading three people’s favorite lyrics.

Then I had them take the handout and see what in the handout was applicable to the lyrics they were given. This was an hour and a half class and that took about an hour.

During that hour I rapidly read through the lyrics myself, noting one or two particularly poetic lines and identifying those. Then in the last half hour of class, I read the poems aloud as poems.

I only knew one of the songs, so my rendition did not echo the music of the songs. The students thought my readings were hysterical. They laughed outright at some of my readings. Sometimes I interpreted the poems in a way totally alien to their reading of the lyrics.

This one day exercise, I believe, gave my whole poetry section more efficacy. The students saw that they already liked poetry, in the form of lyrics. I approached their poems with the same effort (if not enthusiasm) that I gave to literary poetry. And the students had fun finding poetic examples in lyrics many of them were familiar with.

Note: This was a class of 25 students and no one brought in the same lyrics.

Second note: This was a class of 25 students and only one student brought in lyrics to a song I have ever heard of.

I came to this exercise through the presentation of Donna Jarma from OKC at Two-Year College Association, Southwest, last October.

She is much more musically inclined and pop culturally aware than I am, so her work was far more involved and interesting. However, I believe that my class benefited from her recommendations and also we all had fun with literature. (Which is a great idea, imho.)

A question on the final
Argue for leaving a single work out of the next iteration of this class based on moral, aesthetic, and literary considerations.

Rationale for the question
One of the learning outcomes on the syllabus says, “Students will recognize and be able to enumerate the aesthetic, moral, and intellectual values of literature.” I figure if they can argue against something, they can also argue for something, though that might not be true.

The answers
“The Miller’s Tale” from The Canterbury Tales was the clear winner of the “leave this out” category. Most objected based on the morality and its level of difficulty in reading. (I am fairly sure everyone objected to the difficulty in reading level, but most talked of other issues. They were writing for an English teacher, after all. They know their audience.)

Writings by Margery Kempe received the next highest ranking for being eliminated from the syllabus. Most of the arguments were poor, based on “Why did we read this?” or “I don’t remember anything at all about this work.” (As if student memory, or even mine, determines the importance of a work.)

The most interesting vote was for the elimination of John Donne’s poem “The Flea.” This student primarily argued based on the moral implications of the poem. However, if I were able to direct a discussion well, I think this poem offers interesting insight into the seduction process that might be useful/interesting to modern students. Usually, unfortunately, time would be against me.

My response and rationale
I will probably leave out “The Miller’s Tale” next class. And maybe I will leave out Margery Kempe as well, though I think her writing is an interesting juxtaposition to Julian of Norwich’s Showings. But I will continue to include “The Flea,” though I think the morality of the poem is poor, because I want the students to know that … they did not invent sex. Plus, it’s kind of funny to watch their grossed out looks!

I am never quite sure what to do about Beowulf and The Canterbury Tales. Some students, it used to be most, have already read these works or at least part of these works when they arrive in my class.

I love teaching Beowulf enough that every year I consider leaving it out and every year I don’t.

However, The Canterbury Tales is in our book in Middle English. This makes the work extremely difficult to read, even with glosses on many words. The book can’t gloss all the words and sometimes the meaning of the sentence is lost to the students.

It seems like I should not leave out Chaucer, but the work is difficult to read. And how can the students comment on the literary qualities of works if I only give them easy things to read?

It’s an issue I am still struggling with. Feel free to give me your thoughts on the issue.

Directions: Below there are lists of celebrities and the products they endorse. Number their endorsements from most believable to least believable. Your group must come to an agreement.

Bill Cosby
Coca Cola
Jell-O
Del Monte
Ford
Kodak

50 Cents
Lifestyle condoms
Bulletproof, the game for PS2
Blood on the Sands, comic book

Ellen Degeneres
Cover Girl makeup
America Express card

Michael Jordan
Nike equipment
Gatorade sports drink
Hanes underwear
McDonald’s
Chevrolet

Peyton Manning
Sony
MasterCard
DirecTV
Gatorade

Jessica Simpson
Hair Do product
Tarrant Apparel jeans
Proactiv acne products

Tiger Woods
Nike equipment
Titleist golf balls
Gatorade sports drink
Gillette razors
American Express card
Buick

This is what I took with me to the interview yesterday. I did the talk, instead of the activity or the film clip. But I had this activity on the handout and I told them where to go to watch the film clip.