General Instructions for Trackstars /Reaction Papers for Marriage and The Family

1.                 Remember that you will not always agree with the ideas presented by the author of the article; however, you must substantiate your reasons for disagreeing with facts/information not emotion.

2.                The reaction papers are designed to help you think; therefore, you will need to address the following issues in each paper:

a.       What information was new to me?

b.       What ideas have I never considered before I read this article?

c.        What did I learn?

d.      Did the author seem biased in any way?  On what basis did I make this judgment?

e.      With which ideas/concepts did I disagree?  On what basis do I think these concepts are faulty?

3.                   The general format of these papers should be:

a.      You should have a title page with your name, date and title of the paper.  This information should be centered on the title paper.

b.       You should have an inch margin all around.

c.      Your paper should be written in paragraph form and should be a minimum of  5 pages and no more than 8 pages.

d.     You should be careful not to use “sexist” or gender-biased language (e.g. use humankind rather than mankind).

e.     The proper use of the English language is expected (spelling, grammar, punctuation, etc).

f.      You may use personal pronouns since this is a paper expressing your personal reaction to the material presented.

g.      Your name should be at the top right of each page excluding the title page.

h.      Each page should be numbered at the top right margin excluding the title page.

i.        Staple your paper or put it in a binder/folder.  DO NOT USE PAPER CLIPS.