Time to begin rethinking some writing assignments for 2023

One goal of mine for winter break is to beef up some of my units/lessons for "Composing Arguments," the First Year Writing course I have taught for over a decade for Metro State University. All courses need a refresh every once in a while, but when an instructor is consistently disappointed by student performance in a particular assignment, there is no time to waste.

A classic argument genre I like to use is the "critical review," which asks the writer to analyze and judge, with the intention of being helpful for the reader who is trying to decide how to allocate limited money, time, or attention.

One staple for all teaching is the model, or series of models, and I clearly need to be more intentional about which models I choose and how I share them with students. 

The immediate cause here is that most of the reviews I have been reading over the past few years have been underwhelming, if not downright horrible.

Here is a sample review (chosen for length and timeliness rather than artistic value) from the New York Times site on a somewhat new Netflix release called "the Noel Diary" that fits this time of year:

The actor Justin Hartley, who won fame on “This Is Us,” is no stranger to the themes in the holiday romance “The Noel Diary.” The yearning of adoptees, the tug of interracial connections and the repercussions of a family tragedy should ring a welcome bell for fans of NBC’s wonderfully weepy melodrama.

In the movie, Hartley plays Jake Turner, a best-selling author who returns to his estranged mother’s home in Connecticut after her death. He learns she had become a hoarder — though a notably hygienic one — and finds a journal by an unknown author amid the clutter.

A young woman pens her worries onto its pages in the movie’s opening scene.

Barrett Doss (“Station 19”) brings nuanced comedic timing and charm to Rachel, whose search for her birth mother — the journal writer — has led her to Jake’s childhood home, where she’s seen standing tentatively across the street.

Although Rachel is engaged, the two immediately share a spark, one stoked by their road trip to Jake’s even more estranged father in hopes of learning about Rachel’s mother.

James Remar, Bonnie Bedelia and Essence Atkins do nicely buttressing work as Jake’s rueful dad, a compassionate neighbor and Rachel’s birth mother. And the director Charles Shyer brings a journeyman’s ease to the screenplay (based on Richard Paul Evans’s novel by the same name): embracing holiday movie expectations here, gently deflecting them there.

The roadways are as snow-dappled as the town of Maple Falls, where a showing of a holiday classic further bonds the traveling pair. Their on-the-road revelations offer hints of what could turn out to be a wonderful life. While this will come as heartwarming news for sentimental viewers, it’s sure to leave one unsuspecting fiancé out in the cold.

Worth discussing: How important to a reader are references to actors the public may know previously? How important is briefly summarizing the overall theme of a movie? How important is giving readers a rough plot summary? How important is it to not simply give away the ending to a new film?

And one thing about the above review, which is rather brief (288 words is too brief for a college argument, so I would be asking for something closer to 600 or more): How important is it to provide examples that support claims made in a review? I highlighted two unsupported claims that a reader might have questions about. Students might wonder what "buttressing" means, and "a journeyman's ease" is so vague that it practically demands more examination and explanation. 

In the end, the above sample review is well-written while remaining remarkable free of "nutritional value," so to speak. Is that what we want our arguments to amount to?