Reading Questions Assignment

General Information

Each week during the quarter (generally), you will be asked to write a minimum of one
page in response to 1-2 questions. These will be graded on a five point scale for each
response with the only criteria being that you have tried to answer the question and
produced the one-page minimum. The primary purposes of this assignment are to help
prepare you for class discussions, to help you keep up with the reading, and to help you
develop your writing skills. The basic pattern is to ask you to think and write about
specific aspects or issues in regard to the assigned readings before they are discussed in
class. These questions will be ones I plan to take up as part of our class discussions, but I
am not expecting you to anticipate what I or anyone else will be saying about them. In
other words, there are no “right” or “wrong” answers, only good-faith efforts to wrestle
with the questions and to demonstrate that you have done the reading with some degree
of attention by citing textual details. Also, as a writing assignment, I am hoping for
readability, but am not asking for polished, formally structured essays. This is more of a
“guided” journal kind of assignment, an exercise in thoughtful “free” writing. What I
envision you doing is reading the assignment and then writing your response as soon as
you are done, in essence “thinking out loud” on paper. There may be occasions when you
don’t understand a question or how it applies to the text, and in that case you can still get
full credit with a thoughtful explanation of what you don’t understand or why the
question doesn’t seem to fit the text. Again, the basic requirement here is a good-faith
effort and demonstration that you have done the reading.

Logistical and other details:

1. The responses are due at the beginning of class on the day indicated (no in-class
efforts allowed). I will listen to pleadings for same-day exceptions based on forgivable
human error (e.g., inadvertently leaving them in your car), but not if this becomes
habitual or widespread.

2. The responses may be printed, typed, or handwritten, but readability is greatly

appreciated. This applies both to handwriting and to such matters as font size and ink
darkness if you use a computer.

3. By a page I mean the equivalent of what would be printed double-spaced with

standard margins on an 8.5x11 sheet of paper in 12 pt font Times New Roman, or about
250-300 words. If you are handwriting on notebook paper (which is perfectly acceptable)
this generally means single spacing and may require a little more than a single sheet,
depending on the size of your handwriting. Basically, don’t try to fake it with
exaggerated margins, triple or quadruple line spacing, mini-sized sheets of paper, a
sprawling hand, excessive quoting, or blatant repetition. If you want to recopy the
question or use four or five lines to give your name, the date, the class, the instructor, and
a title, recognize that such material does not count as part of the page of response. Short
responses are generally underspecified and are the primary reason why full credit is not
given.
4. When the questions are distributed, in addition to those required there will often be
some identified as “Bonus: (Not required).” Your grade for this assignment at the end of
the quarter will be based on a scaled point system calculated by the number of questions
that were required. Typically this number is 16-18, or 80-90 points as the maximum. The
function of the “Bonus” questions is to permit you to make-up for those you don’t do or
don’t receive full credit for. You can also bank these bonuses, doing more than the
required early so that you have a cushion in case later in the quarter you get sick or need
to devote your energies on other assignments. I always give plenty of bonus questions –
sometimes as many as the “required” ones – but don’t count on there being enough to
make up for three or four weeks of not doing any. Also, there is no extra credit for
exceeding them other than the educational added value in doing them.

5. One of the implications of point #4 is that from a grade standpoint, there is no

difference between a “required” and a “bonus” question: The responses count the same. I
do number the questions, reflecting generally (though not always) the order in which I
plan to take up the issues in class or what I regard as their importance. But, if in a given
week in which there are two “required” questions and three “bonuses” distributed, your
score for that week will be the same whether you do the two required or two of the
bonuses or one of each.