The questions I set for a final examination, like all the senior-level questions I set, require students to respond to a quotation and draw a comparison between two texts they have studied. This accomplishes two things: first, they bring focus to their thoughts by engaging the thoughts of others; second, they demonstrate that by reading one text, they bring something unique to the reading of another.
The quotation is inevitably the more difficult of the two tasks. Another discipline might demonstrate best. Imagine that I wanted you to discuss municipal politics. (I do not mean to suggest that the study of Political Science is any easier than the study of English: only that while not everyone has an opinion on Gertrude Stein, everyone has an opinion on garbage collection!) The basic question could be, "Discuss the management of services in your municipality and the one down the road." Such a broad question might solicit responses that discuss specific issues like garbage collection, snow clearing, or potholes; some responses might look at more global issues like ward distribution, business taxes, or budgeting policies. Some responses might try to address all these things.
If I was asking the question, it might go like this: "'Towns and cities are preoccupied with neighborhood issues,' claims Some Expert, 'so council members are too distracted by potholes to make good decisions when new businesses want to relocate.' Discuss the management of services in your municipality and the one down the road." The idea would be that students could narrow their discussion of services to those provided by third-party businesses. They could contrast small and large service issues, and they could raise the issue of parochial ward conflicts. There is probably more meat in my imagined quotation, of course, but the general idea holds: students can begin by agreeing or disagreeing with "Some Expert," and they can use her assertions against which to compare their own ideas. This, to me, is preferable to a free-for-all.
The question of comparison is also interesting, as I demand of my students a "staggered" approach. For my question, above, I would expect that students would discuss businesses in their town and in that of their neighbors; they would discuss small and large service issues in their town and in that of their neighbors; they would discuss ward conflicts in their town and in that of their neighbors. I have discovered that the instinct of too many students is to tell me everything about their town and then tell me everything about the other one. This is a less effective comparison, of course, as the contrast is tacked on in haste at the end, or -- worse -- is left for the reader to do. So, done improperly, an essay may demand that its reader flip between two or three pages to see how potholes are filled in two adjacent municipalities. The larger assumption, of course, is that by considering how potholes are filled in the other town, students gain a new perspective on how they are filled in their own.
Essays without focus, essays that present as two separate descriptions stapled together get a "C" or a "D." Papers scoring "A" or "B" engage the quotation in a staggered comparison.
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