General Information on Informal Writing Assignments
What do we mean by “informal writing”?
Informal writing activities are often called “low stakes” writing—this type of writing does
not constitute a large portion of their grade, it’s more exploratory and tentative, and it’s a
more approachable for the students than more formal assignments. They don’t have to
worry as much about form, grammar or adopting a suitably academic voice.
What are its benefits?
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It helps students think. Writing is not merely a means of communication. It
promotes thinking and learning. Research shows that this type of writing, in
particular, can be particularly effective for promoting critical thinking.
It’s fun—for the both the students and the teacher.
It gets the students more engaged in their learning.
It can give the teacher helpful insight into what the students are thinking and what
they might not understanding.
It can be done in class, and it can be a great way to break up long classes.
We can use this type of writing to give students the chance to develop the kind of
critical thinking skills we’re hoping to see in their formal, higher stakes writing. If
we dislike “data dump”-type essays, where students just piece together paraphrased
representations of their research, without thinking about it or analyzing it, then we
can help them better understand what academic inquiry and argumentation means
by giving them chances to practice in other types of writing.
How should we grade it? Will informal writing give me a lot of marking?
Bean points out that reading everything that students write is like a piano teacher listening
to tapes of her student’s home practice sessions—definitely not necessary. The trick, he
says, is to read some of their work but not all of it. You may find that you enjoy reading
this kind of writing from the students, and the time you spend reading it may balance out.
If it takes up some class time, perhaps it ends up saving you time because you’re not
preparing for that portion of teaching time. In general, informal writing should require
minimal marking time—use a pass/fail (they did it or they didn’t) or use a plus, check, or
minus system that just notes if the students put the expected time and effort into the
work.
Some Ideas for Enhancing Critical Thinking with Informal Writing Activities
1. Short, in-class exploratory writing that gets students to think about and react to course
content, or to link personal experiences or prior knowledge to concepts in your course. Some
possible prompts: What confused you in today’s class or today’s readings? What did you find most
interesting, surprising or disturbing about today’s readings? How does your own personal experience relate
to what you studied today? What effect is this course having on your personal life, your beliefs, your values,
your previous understanding of things? How does what we have been studying recently relate to your other
courses or to other parts of this course?
2. Get students to explain course content to a naïve reader. This type of activity gives students
the chance to play the role of expert relative to the assigned audience—perhaps someone who
missed class last week, or a friend or a younger sibling. Example: “Your batty uncle thinks it is unfair
and stupid that passengers sitting in the same section of an airplane probably paid different prices for their
tickets. As an economics student, help your uncle see why all these different prices make perfect economic
sense and are not unfair.”
3. Think Pieces: These are more guided reading response activities, where students are given a
question based on the course material and asked to respond to it in a exploratory, reflective,
informal way. Example: What made Athena’s and Aphrodite’s births unusual? Think about what you’ve
learned about the Ancient Greek worldview, and consider how it might have “made sense” to the Greeks for
these particular goddesses to be born in this way, or for their parent(s) to give birth in this way.
4. Using Blogs or Electronic Discussion Boards: One way to get students to write more, and in a
less formal way, is to move some of the class discussion onto an online format. There are numerous
advantages to writing in this venue: one of the most important ones being that it gives students a
broader audience for their coursework than just their teacher. You can give the students specific
questions to address, or get the students to initiate their own reflections. To encourage student-tostudent interaction, Bean recommends that you assign bloggers to small teams who will read and
respond regularly to each other’s work.
5. Believing-Doubting Activity: You can use this concept to generate a variety of informal writing
activities for the students. The idea is to get them to read something or think about something first
as a “believer” and second as a “doubter.” I’ve included some more detailed prompts for a
believing-doubting critical reading activity on the back of this sheet.
6. Thesis-Writing Activity: Bean thinks the single most effective writing activity you can get the
students to do is to write one sentence—the thesis statement of a real or imaginary essay. A lot of
thinking is packed into one sentence of writing, and students are often amazed at the richness of
the ideas that can be embedded into a good generalization with embedded clauses. Getting
students to write a thesis together can be a great group activity as well.
7. Thesis-Seeking Essay: Academic writing generally expects students to produce thesissupporting essays, but an effective, less formal assignment is the “thesis-seeking essay.” This
assignment asks students to provide a chronological account of their thinking process while
wrestling with a problem. A thesis-seeking essay foregrounds the students’ thinking process and
allows them to narrate the evolving process of their thinking. You can assign this essay as an
intermediate stage in a research paper, ultimately leading toward a thesis-supporting essay.
8. Counterargument Activity: After the students have a draft of their essay, ask them to imagine
how someone might disagree with their argument, and then have them write a response to that
person that takes their concerns into consideration.
Believer-Doubter Activity:
This activity is intended to introduce students to strategies of critical reading by emphasizing the
need to understand the purpose and content of an essay before taking a critical stance towards it.
Students are asked first to approach a text as “believers,” focusing on the structure and the
strategies the author uses to accomplish his or her goal. They then read the same text as
“doubters,” questioning the effectiveness of the writer’s argument.
Before you Read, Ask Yourself:
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What is my position on this subject?
What are my main reasons for this position?
How persuadable am I?
Now, read the essay first as a “Believer”:
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What question is the writer trying to answer?
Why does the writer think this question is important?
What is the author’s main purpose? What is the single most important idea of the essay?
(What is the essay’s thesis?)
What are the main reasons the writer gives for his/her opinion? Go through the essay and
list the main points the writer makes.
What types of support does the writer offer for those reasons? Personal Experience?
Research Findings? Examples? Statistics? Appeals to Experts? Metaphors?
And then Read it Again as a “Doubter”:
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Did you “lose” the argument at any point? Was this due to a gap in the reasoning, or due to
logical fallacies?
What assumptions does the author make? Do you agree with them?
Are the writer’s reasons adequate for his/her opinion?
What tone does the author take toward his/her opposition? Toward the audience?
Do the reasons and support fit together in a logical manner?
Does the writer address the main counter-arguments of the opposing viewpoint?
What do I know about the author?
What are his/her motivations for writing this essay?
Who is the intended audience?
After you read, ask yourself:
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Did my position change as a result of reading this essay?
If not, is it because the argument was too weak to persuade me, or was it because I am too
resistant to change my mind on the subject?