I was a composition & rhetoric professor right after grad school, from 2012 to 2014. I discovered that there is an art to writing a prompt, in part because students tend to skim them. Because of that, I tried to use simple, plain language and keep the documents as concise as possible, so students were more likely to read them in full.

I consider writing these documents my first foray into realizing the importance of writing the “boring” stuff, the kinds of documents people have to read and understand, even though they aren’t fun or flashy.

I’ve also included a worksheet I designed to help students brainstorm and improve thesis statements for various assignments.

Prompt #1: Submission project.

You can download a PDF of this file here.

Prompt #2: Historical narrative.

You can download a PDF of this file here.

Thesis worksheet.

You can download a PDF of this file here.