I saw your post about your student and the writing assignment you gave. Can I ask what exactly is an open letter? I teach freshman composition and my students have spent weeks bemoaning how difficult the research paper is.
Absolutely!
An open letter is a bit of an internet phenomenon that has been gaining ground recently. It’s basically a letter that is addressed to someone/something specific, but published for a broad audience. The letter is usually calling someone out for something they did in order to raise awareness of a particular problem.
One of the best recent examples was Kenny Smith’s letter to Charles Barkley about the comments he made after Ferguson. Other examples I used in class included one from Audre Lorde to Mary Daly (which is basically one of the seminal examples of an open letter), one to Ann Coulter, and this funny one from McSweeney’s. McSweeney’s has a ton of great ones, although most of them probably shouldn’t be used in the classroom :)
A few posts back I explained the process that we’ve gone through so far. I’m requiring them to use the same level of sources I would for any high school research paper: peer-reviewed, if possible; at the very least written by a credible author and published by a reputable source. That way I’m still hitting all my research standards, but they’re writing in a format they feel more comfortable with.
