Sources in Conversation
Once students in my first-year writing class select a research topic, they complete an annotated bibliography and an additional paper that prepares them for the final research paper. In this preparatory paper, which I developed from a model introduced to me by my former teaching mentor, Michael Abelson, students compose the script for a televised debate panel positioning themselves as the moderator and their sources as the guests. This “Sources in Conversation” assignment is a crucial step in scaffolding the final research paper; by the end of the Sources in Conversation paper, students have written, organized, and revised their introduction, main claim, sub-claims, and evidence.
Because the “Sources in Conversation” paper is a complex assignment that must be approached in incremental steps, I provide students with a series of worksheets that assist the brainstorming process as they map out the relationships between their sources. These worksheets provide a clear, logical structure that allows students to then take their learning into their own hands by making creative connections between their sources.
This assignment is popular with students because they find it easy to write more, and more easily, when they have freedom to be creative and choose their own topics. This assignment effectively achieves many requirements for the course at once: students experience writing as a dynamic process that must consider audience and tone, and they learn to plan, organize, and revise ideas and sources before composing the final paper. What I find most valuable in this exercise is the process of embodying another writer’s voice as students work out the strengths and weaknesses of competing arguments.