Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Blogs vs. Term Papers


After reading the New York Times article, Blog vs. Term Papers, I completely agree with Cathy N. Davidson, an English professor at Duke, and believe that the term paper should be eradicated. The term paper can be very stressful to students. I also concur with the argument established in the article that term papers require facts, and there really is no room for loose opinions. Granted, term papers are relevant, in that they allow the course instructor to see how the student has become more competent using the material learned; but with the vast amount of technological resources, such extensive writing can be unnecessary. I say this because term papers are usually 5 to 10 pages in length; that's quite a demand.
In my opinion, the person who wrote the article actually agreed that term papers should be removed as well. The author quoted Ms. Cathy Davidson saying that blogs are fun. I also would agree, simple because as a student, I feel that I am allowed to express my opinion more through a blog than a term paper. With blogs, the students are allowed to not only include facts, but state weather they agree; being able to include personal expressions will always enable a writer to enjoy what they are writing.


5 comments:

  1. Torrence I agree with you completely about blogs. I would much rather do a blog than a term paper any day. Blogs let me say what I want when I want, and I like that. Blogs let you express yourself and isn't that what writing is all about.

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  2. Term papers are so lifeless, to be honest. I personally never feel like I've learned anything from the majority of papers that I've had to write and that's mainly because all of them seem so pointless--I'd rather devote my time to writing about something or someone that ISN'T dead or uninteresting. I would just like to become a better writer and that's what blogs allow me to do. You're right: I can express my opinions more openly through this type of avenue.

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  3. Torrence I agree with you about term papers. In the past luckily I had professors that would give essays and, not term papers. I think that it would be a good thing to write blogs and include the essay part in it. In a way even though term papers require a lot, they are very helpful in the learning experience. If the blogs were done in a different way I would love it.

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  4. I agree with you when you stated you like blogs over term papers. The length of a term paper is way to much. Writing a blog is much more easier because you can be yourself, be bold, and creative. Writing 300-400 words for a blog is much easier then writing a 5-7 page term paper.

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  5. I like Chun's idea of integrating the term paper into the blog format. I've left the last 4 weeks of the schedule open so that the class can develop a writing project of their choice. It might be interesting to try this out-do the same kind of writing as you do in a term paper, but do it on your blogs. Maybe rather than have one really long piece of writing (as you typically do with term papers), we could have several shorter pieces of writing that add up to be a term paper. What does everyone think of this?

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