If At First You Don't Succeed

Writing essays is one of those necessary evils when taking a composition class. We can have the most invigorating discussions, but when it comes time to work on and do the essay in response to the topic, things just seem to fall a bit flat. There might be several reasons for this, but one duty that the instructor has is to write clear, interesting prompts and guidelines for students to work on. This continues to be a challenge for me and the winner of the “Most likely to be improved” for next quarter.

Our first book, The Tipping Point, by Malcolm Gladwell, was a intriguing account about the concept of social epidemics. I had students write about several different aspects of the book, from responding to the idea that Gladwell’s theory was not all that it was cracked up to be to looking for examples of tipping points in our society. The results were a mixed lot: some students did quite well, but the majority didn’t quite hit the mark. Again, many reasons may account for such results but I went back and examined the essay prompts again to see if further clarifications could be made.

I would definitely refine question 1, especially where I say, “ Explore the ways that he claims his ideas are controversial and give a critique as to whether or not you agree with him.” That’s a pretty confusing statement that I would revise into, “Explain why Gladwell thinks his theory is counterintuitive and give a critique of either his theory or a critique of his detractors. If you are critiquing Gladwell’s theory, make sure to include outside examples demonstrating what you mean. If you are critiquing Gladwell’s detractors, make sure to explain what arguments they would make against him and then carefully de-bunk them.” This will hopefully help to eliminate the essays which basically said, “I agree with Gladwell and here are the examples he gives that I agree with.”