ENG 102: SAMPLE ASSIGNMENT SHEETS
The purpose of these materials is not necessarily to provide documents that can be immediately distributed to students; rather, these sample assignment sheets are intended to inspire ideas, offer different pedagogical approaches to the course goals of ENG 102, and/or provide suggestions/guidelines for teachers writing their own documents.
Notes
- It is not recommended that one teach another’s course materials verbatim. While these materials may serve as productive guides and models, the process of writing classroom documents often helps teachers to shape materials for particular course needs, understand their own objectives for specific writing assignments, be better able to answer students’ questions (rather than second-guess the original author’s intention), and make clear connections to other coursework (and discussions/lecturers/activities). Therefore, if teachers choose to use these documents, it is strongly suggested that they at least significantly modify them before integrating them into their own courses.
- An assignment sheet is only as good as the class time dedicated to it -- accompanying lectures, discussions, and other classroom activities cannot be represented here; the ultimate quality/productivity of these assignments, then, cannot be judged by the documents alone. Assignment sheets usually outline tasks, and how to accomplish those tasks is dealt with in class.
- Some documents refer to textbooks, readings, or materials specific to a particular section of ENG 102; these ancillary materials are therefore not made available by the Department. Some documents also refer to particular syllabi and/or corresponding activity sheets/handouts; whenever possible, this material has been included in this database, and links are provided.
- Teachers collaborate and share materials frequently in the Department. As a result, some of the documents included here look very much alike. That can be an asset for greater programmatic coherence, to be certain. Yet sometimes even subtle changes (tone or word choice, just for instance) can be significant, given particular pedagogical styles and classes.
- For clarity and easier accessibility, documents are divided according to genres (listed and described below), as much as it is recognized that these categories often overlap and can be only loosely defined. Sometimes assignments will ask students to accomplish multiple tasks, allowing documents to be readily included in several sections; for simplicity, they are not cross-listed.
- Many of these documents can be easily adapted for ENG 101. (Likewise, many of the ENG 101 sample assignment sheets can be adopted for ENG 102.)
Argumentative Analyses
. . . are thesis-driven, analytical essays that investigate an object other than a literary text and do not engage traditional “position paper” topics; one element of these assignments is explicit recognition of a claim/thesis statement’s significance as opposed to an argument that merely makes a claim and “supports” it (for these latter assignments, see the “Position Papers/Arguments” section). “Argumentative Analyses” are written as examples of “academic discourse,” for which scholarly publications might serve as productive models.
Explanatory/Definitional Arguments
. . . help students to “make knowledge” by explaining a particular idea/concept to an audience
Position Papers/Arguments
. . . are claim-driven essays that are a bit more simple than the “argumentative analyses” described above; these essays include “policy declarations” (for instance, proposals to solve a problem), traditional position papers (such as those whose topics are often covered by mainstream media and are largely binary in nature), or opinion papers (which are arguments based on value judgments, but are not particularly “academic,” using imperatives and “should” statements)
Rhetorical Analyses
. . . generally focus not on the content of a work (as commonly a literary analysis does), but rather on how authors/speakers communicate; rhetorical analyses concentrate on methods of persuasion directed toward specific audiences for particular purposes in defined contexts. Rhetorical analyses also might ask students to examine how a text functions as a text (how a particular paragraph, merely for instance, functions in relation to the rest of the work, etc.)
Source Engagement Papers
. . . help students to integrate sources into their own papers and specifically engage them and/or reflect upon how sources-as-evidence shapes and are shaped by students’ own arguments
Value Arguments/Opinion Papers
. . . are thesis-driven essays that aim to convince an audience of a personally held belief or emphasis a particular value about the object of study; these essays are often used to get students to avoid the horrific “data dump” research papers with which they are all too familiar
