Guidelines for Writing Draft and
Final
Responses to Discussion Questions
Professor
Milofsky
One of the
reasons I post
discussion questions is to be sure that at least some of the students
in class
have thought about the readings and are prepared to stimulate
discussion. This is
why your response must be written and
posted on Blackboard before class if you wish to revise your answer and
submit
a final draft at the end of the week for credit.
If you post a response, I expect you to be
energetic about discussion in class.
This might happen when we project responses from
Blackboard on the
screen. It might
happen when the
instructor calls on those who have responded.
It might happen because you are outgoing about asking
questions and
offering observations as we discuss materials.
You should be ready to discuss the question thoroughly and
thoughtfully
and you should play a leadership role in class discussion.
Discussion
questions that will be
posted for most of the classes this semester are the basis for that
portion of
students’ grades allocated to exams—midterms and
finals. Thus,
students must approach the final
versions of responses with the same orientation one would bring to
completing a
take-home exam. This
means:
- You must follow a correct format. This means to begin that
the full text of the question you are answering must appear at the top
of the first page. You
also must be careful that the response is correct in terms of spelling
and grammar. Since
you will submit these questions electronically, use Microsoft Word or a
word-processing program compatible with Microsoft Word.
If your text cannot be open or if the question you are
answer is not stated it is hard for the instructor to grade the paper.
- Draw on readings in a full and complete manner. When responding
to essay exam questions in any sociology class you should refer to
readings, both those specifically assigned and other materials covered
in class or even in other classes.
Part of the task is to show that you have read things,
thought about the material, and that you are putting this background to
work. While
accurately recapitulating the reading is part of the task you can go
overboard. It is
more important to explain the key points, to give a critical or
analytic response to the reading, and to use the reading to set up an
analytic framework that helps you and us to understand and discuss an
issue or question.
- Provide an analytic framework in the opening
paragraph. Usually
I prefer an opening statement that tells what you will state or argue
in your essay or question response.
Question responses often are stream of consciousness
productions where the topics wander or students figure out what they
really are saying at the end. This
is realistic in terms of how we go about writing but you may have to do
a revision that provides a clear statement in the opening paragraph and
that shows how the parts of the question go together.
- Present your ideas sociologically. I don’t want you
to go overboard on this one so that your presentation becomes overly
formal or too general. But
this is an advanced sociology class so you ought to be able to bring
sociological concepts into the discussion, even if you do so
informally. (You can use plain speech to give a sociological viewpoint
as an alternative to giving an extended presentation of a theorist we
might not have read in our class.)
You ought to make a special effort to think about how
a sociologist would respond to a question, in contrast to how a
psychologist or epidemiologist or journalist might respond. When the question refers
to an empirical situation (it may not refer to a text assigned for
class), tell what sociological issues are in play.
If you ignore this part you are likely to give a
response that is not particularly sociological and as a result you are
likely to leave out major issues that ought to enter into your thinking.
- Answer the question.
This is pretty straightforward but there are two
aspects. First,
once you have given a response you ought to go back and check to see
that you actually did the analysis the question asks for and that your
response is full and complete. Second,
students often answer questions by giving a common sense answer rather
than a sociological answer. If
your response is one someone could give walking in off the street
without ever having done our readings or having participated in class
discussions then it will be inadequate.
Remember that these are questions that examine your
knowledge about our class. Often
there is an issue or problem for our class that a question is meant for
you to think about and discuss. Do
that. Common sense
answers to questions usually by-pass that task.