Deciphering the Prompt

I consider myself a bit of a master at interpreting the often complex communication forms of the Liberal Arts professor. I am able to create meaning from the most circular exam question, find the central question in a sea of text, translate academic jargon into plain English. However, I must admit that this semester, I have found my skills on this front challenged by the phenomenon of the Monster Prompt.

This prompt is probably the most intimidating looking creation I have ever seen during my time at Richmond, and can be spotted by the presence of a few characteristics.
1) It is disproportionately long for the size of the assignment. Example: A 500-word for an assignment that is expected to be no more than 1000.
2) It poses at least five questions or ideas when clearly there is only enough room in the paper to elaborate on one.
3) It utilizes terms like "consider," "think about," "examine," "suggest."
4) It leaves the reader with a feeling of confusion, frustration, helplessness, or a combination of all three.

A recent prompt from a professor contained (note: this was just a section of the overall prompt) the following chain of commands. I've broken the prompt down down and left out the details to display them most effectively.
- "Consider what the author of your source puts forward, and also whether their evidence seems to fit into that model."
- "Your finished paper should have a clear thesis, providing the paper’s central argument. It should be organized to lead your reader effectively through your points."
- "It should go beyond simple summary to analyze and explore the evidence using specific examples (with page refs) and reaching conclusions about the implications of that evidence."
- "It should identify your chosen source as a particular genre, from a particular time."
- "And it should contextualize and assess it using at least two other readings/work."

Even though I have written for this professor a half a dozen times previously, I still was overwhelmed when first seeing this prompt. I think that my concern particularly stemmed from the structure, a block of text with one command after another. But counterintuitively, even with all of these tasks to complete within the paper, the assignment is still fairly ambiguous. I was not sure how to approach the topic, what elements I should focus on, and the extent to which I needed to focus on it. As a student studying writing theory, if I felt lost when reading the prompt, I cannot imagine how a first-year struggling writer would feel.

Kendall in "The Assignment Sheet Mystery," writes that an "assignment sheet is an important text within the university; the assignment sheet is a text written by instructors and affects the rhetorical situations within which students must compose" (2). I think this is an important mindset from which to approach the topic. By breaking down and analyzing the type of commands my professor included, the word choice, and even her tone, I was able to better gauge what kind of paper she was expecting. For example, in the prompt that I highlighted earlier, the professor gave active verb commands like "consider," "contextualize," "analyze," and "assess". While she did not give a lot of direction in the prompt, by asking the writer to complete these tasks through their writing, I could tell that the assignment was reflective in nature, and that she would value specific, critical observations over the proclamation of a universal truth. Similarly, the professor's tone in the prompt was almost conversational when discussing the subject at hand. By combining my previous experience with her and the provisions of the prompt, I could infer that the paper did not have rigid structural guidelines that I had to follow to do well.

I think it was this freedom contained, ironically, in the page-long prompt, that made it so difficult for me to begin the paper. As a consultant, I can help students "de-code," as Kendall says, the assignment sheet in front of them as I did myself. However, in these types of prompts, it is ultimately up to the student to make the final judgment call. In writing, there is always a risk. In papers such as these, where academic freedom is given to the student, the risk is much greater. It is our job as consultants to guide the students through what their possibilities are within the confines of the rhetorical structure of the prompt, but in the end, we can only hope that the risks they choose to take pay off.