Ch. 13- prompting prompts

“Because each composition represents a response to a specific ‘invitation’ to write, the problems in many papers may be the fault, not of the writer, but of the assignment” (213)

“Effective writing assignments encourage students to define progressively more complex rhetorical problems” (215)

Pretend you are an administrator overseeing the prompts chosen for the following examinations: Developmental English: Basic Writing, Exit Exam  & Graduate Writing Exam (GWE).  Read the prompts below and explain which one would fit best for each exam.  Back up your decision with supporting evidence and claims.

For homework, research each prompt and find as much information as possible as to 1) where it came from 2) context 3) what schools and grades or courses have used it for exams 4) year it was written.

After researching, look back at your decisions.  Do you feel the same? How have your thoughts or supporting evidence changed and/or stayed the same.  What new evidence can you add or remove? Any insights post research?

From infancy to adulthood, advertising is in the air Americans breathe, the information we absorb, almost without knowing it. It floods our mind with pictures of perfection and goals of happiness easy to attain. . . . We are feeding on foolery, of which a steady diet, for those who feed on little else, cannot help but leave a certain fuzziness of perception. ----- BarbaraTuchman

We expect our ties with our immediate family to extend throughout the lifetimes of the people involved. This expectation is by no means always fulfilled, as rising divorce rates and family break-ups indicate. Nevertheless, we still theoretically marry “until death do us part” and the social ideal is a lifetime relationship. Whether this is a proper or realistic expectation of a society in high transience is debatable. The fact remains, however, that family links are expected to be long term if not lifelong, and considerable guilt attaches to the person who breaks off such a relationship.

----Future Shock, Alvin Toffler