Assignments
Reading and Writing Assignments
Writing and reading are interconnected skills. There is voluminous research showing the connections, but it's also common sense. Writers learn to put together texts by reading. They learn what they expect as readers, what they like and admire, how to supply those qualities in their own texts. They imitate. They borrow - or as T. S. Elliot said, they steal. They build their vocabularies, complicate (or simplify depending on the need) their syntax, reveal the complexity of thought in action. Conversely, readers learn to be better readers by writing. They begin to understand the way texts are put together. The myth of the writer in his garret (too often "his") begins to disintegrate as they discover the steps (and missteps and sidesteps and resteps) of writing. They understand that subtext--the mythical "secret message" of English literature courses--is something that every text has, that it's up to the author to decide how complicated or simple that subtext should be, and ultimately, that subtext (or, more specifically, meaning) is something that writers and readers collaborate to create.
In our department, we believe that texts are more than just a vessel for content, that reading assignments are more than simply catalysts for class discussion. In order for students to see real connections between reading and writing, we feel that reading assignments should be read rhetorically (i. e. they should be dissected so that students can see how they work, not just what they say). We also feel that writing assignments should directly address the reading that is done in a class. In addition to having students "write back" to the texts they read (via journal, informal response, Blackboard, etc.), they should be encouraged to "steal" rhetorical strategies from the readings.
Copyright Jodie Childers
Following is a selection of reading and writing assignments from our faculty that we feel illustrate this spirit of writing and reading.
Below, please follow the links to some sample writing assignments (some with annotations in italics). To see a wider range of approaches to writing assignments in 101and 102, please check out the departmental archive .
101 : Arts of the Contact Zone
101 : Ethnography- Assignment
101 : Walking Tour Assignment
102 : Antigone Assignment
102 : Research and Writing Fiction