Assignment 2 of 3

Course 1, Assignment 2 of 3

Explain It to a Friend

What You Are About To Do

This is the middle assignment in Course 1. You have already done one thing. In the first assignment you picked a scriptural passage you had inherited a gloss about, performed the Adler close-read on it, and wrote about what became visible when the gloss came off. You did that as a student working through an academic exercise. The instructor read what you wrote. The instructor asked you challenge questions. You responded.

In this assignment the register changes. You are no longer writing to demonstrate that you performed a move. You are writing as someone who has learned something and is telling another person what you have learned. The other person is not your instructor. The other person is a friend who heard you have been studying at Saint Luke's and asked you what the course is about.

You have fifteen minutes of your friend's attention. You are going to use them.

What You Are Becoming

Before this sheet tells you what you are going to do, it has to tell you what you are about to become. It is not a profession. It is not a title. It is a kind of Christian who is rarer than they should be and more useful than they get credit for.

A believer who can actually read the Bible, and who can talk about what they read, to a real person, without the conversation turning into a sermon or a lecture.

Modern Christianity has many people who can quote verses. Fewer who have read them carefully. Almost none who can talk about what they have read in a form another person wants to keep listening to. The last category is the one this diploma is forming you for. Not because you are being turned into a teacher or a preacher. Those are their own roles and they have their own formation. But because a Christian who has done the work of reading honestly should, at the end of that work, be able to tell another person what they found, in a form that leaves the other person more interested in the text than they were before the conversation started.

That is what you are about to practice. The conversation with the friend is the form. The substance is what the book has taught you and what Assignment 1 made you perform on the page. The test is whether you can put the substance into the form without breaking either one.

You will not feel ready. This is the first time you are doing it. The first time anyone does it, they do it unevenly. The voice you are starting to develop here is a voice you will refine across the rest of the diploma program, and sharpen further in the Master of Christian Catechesis if you continue. What matters at this stage is that you begin, with awareness of what you are beginning.

What Friend-Register Is

The voice you are about to write in is not a stylistic choice. It is not about making your writing warmer or simpler or more casual. It is about who you are oriented toward while you are writing.

An academic paper is oriented toward showing the reader you understand the material. A sermon is oriented toward moving the hearer toward a decision. A catechism is oriented toward forming the catechumen in doctrine. A conversation with a friend is none of these things. A conversation with a friend is oriented toward the other person's curiosity. They asked you something. You are answering them. They are allowed to interrupt. They are allowed to not be impressed. They are allowed to disagree. The success of the conversation is not measured by what you said. It is measured by whether they wanted to keep talking.

This means several things in practice.

It means you use the words you would actually use in a conversation. If a word would not leave your mouth when you were talking to your friend on a bench outside a coffee shop, it should not leave your pen here. If you have only ever seen a word in a book, find a word you would use.

It means you tell them something that interested you, and you tell them why it interested you. Not because interest is the highest virtue, but because the friend is asking what you are studying, and the honest answer to that question is the part that actually got your attention — not the summary of the table of contents.

It means you stop when they would stop you. If you can feel, while you are writing, that your friend would at this point raise an eyebrow and say “wait, what does that mean?”, answer them right there. Do not keep going and hope they figure it out.

It means you do not try to win them. The friend is not an opponent. The friend is not a prospect. The friend is a person who asked a question and wants to know what you have been doing. If at any point your writing starts to sound like you are arguing with them, back up. The arguing voice is not friend-register. It is debate-register, and it will land differently than you think it will.

The goal is not to make your friend agree with everything you say. The goal is to make your friend understand what you have been doing, in a way that leaves them more curious than they were before.

The Friend You Are Imagining

To write this paper well, you need a specific picture of the person on the other side of it.

The person is not a fellow believer in formation. If they were a catechumen, you would be writing catechetical voice, and the Master of Christian Catechesis students are the ones who do that, and they do it with different training than you have had.

The person is not a hostile atheist looking to dismantle your faith. If they were hostile, you would be writing apologetics, which is a different discipline with different goals and different rules, and this is not that assignment.

The person is a friend. Pick a real one, in your head, while you write. A sibling. A roommate. A coworker. A neighbor. Someone who knows you, who respects you enough to ask you a real question, who is not trying to convert you or be converted, and who will actually listen for fifteen minutes if the conversation is worth listening to.

What does this friend know about Christianity already? They know what the culture has given them. They have probably heard of the Bible. They have probably seen a verse somewhere. They have probably been to a wedding or a funeral in a church. They have heard people argue about religion and have formed a vague opinion that the arguments are tedious. They are not ignorant and they are not hostile. They are ordinarily curious about what you have been doing with your time, and they asked because they actually wanted to know, and now the answer is your problem.

That is your audience.

What You Are Going To Do

Write, in approximately one thousand to twelve hundred words, how you would explain what you have been studying to that friend.

The structure of the paper is yours to find. There is no required three-part division. There is no template. What you include, and in what order, is for you to decide based on what would actually serve the person on the other side of the conversation. This is a different kind of freedom than the three-part subject paper gave you. The first paper gave you the structure and asked you to fill it in. This one gives you the audience and asks you to build the structure that serves them.

You may draw on anything you have read in the book. You may draw on what you performed in Assignment 1. You may tell them about the gloss you chose and what the close-read showed you. You may tell them about another chapter of the book that caught your attention. You may tell them about the whole move the book is teaching, at a high level, with one concrete example that shows what the move looks like. Any of these can work. What will not work is a recitation of the book's table of contents, because a recitation of the table of contents is what someone who has read a book says. It is not what someone who has absorbed a book says.

The Paper

Approximately one thousand to twelve hundred words. Structure is yours. Voice is the friend-register described above. Substance draws on the book and on your work in Assignment 1.

The Video

A recorded video of ten minutes, plus or minus two. You present the substance of your paper on camera, in your own voice, looking into the camera. You may use brief notes. You may not read from a script.

The video is not a summary of the paper. It is you having the actual conversation, out loud, with the imagined friend, while the camera watches. If the video and the paper sound like the same person, the voice is yours. If they sound like two different people, one of them is written and the other one is you, and the instructor can tell the difference.

Your face must be visible throughout. The recording quality does not need to be professional but must be clear enough that your instructor can see you and hear you. Phone, webcam, tablet, all are acceptable.

The Challenge Response

After your instructor has reviewed your paper and your video, you will receive three challenge questions. The instructor is no longer playing the role of a teacher checking your work. The instructor is playing the role of your friend. The three questions will be questions the friend might actually ask after hearing your explanation. Follow-ups. Clarifications. The “wait, what about…” questions that a thoughtful listener would offer when something in your explanation almost made sense but did not quite land. They will not be hostile. They will be the questions a real friend would have.

You respond on camera, in friend-register, the way you would respond to a real friend asking a real follow-up. Three to six minutes total for all three responses. Same format as the first video: on camera, notes permitted, no script.

Quality Checks While You Write

If you find yourself wanting a starting point because the freedom feels paralyzing, here are some questions to ask yourself while you write. They are not a structure. They are quality checks. Use them while writing the first draft and again while reading what you have written.

Am I writing as if I am talking to my friend, or as if I am writing a paper? If I am writing as if I am writing a paper, the voice is off. Picture the friend. Picture them sitting across from me. Picture them asking what I have been studying. Write the answer to them, not the answer to my instructor.

Are the words I am using the words I would actually use in a conversation? If I am using a word I picked up from the textbook and have not yet made my own, either replace it with a word I would use, or take a moment in the writing to give my friend the word by explaining what it carries.

If my friend stops me at any point in this paper and says “wait, what does that mean,” can I answer them in the next sentence, or have I used a term I cannot unpack? If I cannot unpack it, I should not use it. If I can unpack it, I should unpack it before my friend has to ask.

Am I helping my friend see what I have come to see, or am I demonstrating to my instructor that I have come to see it? The first is the assignment. The second is performance. They sound similar on the page until you read your own writing carefully, and then they sound very different.

Have I left my friend more curious than they were when the conversation started, or have I left them tired? The good version of this paper leaves the friend wanting to know more. The tedious version leaves the friend glad the conversation is over.

How This Will Be Evaluated

This assignment is graded pass / does not yet pass. The evaluation looks at the paper, the video, and the challenge response together, as a single body of work, against five dimensions.

Dimension 1: Evidence you read the book. Specific references to material from The Gloss that show you engaged the text rather than skimmed it. Generic references to “the book” or “what I learned” without concrete content is the failure mode.

Dimension 2: You drew on what you performed in Assignment 1. The close-read you performed on your chosen passage in the first assignment is part of the substance this paper should use. You are not required to make it the center. You are required to use it. A paper that shows no evidence of having performed Assignment 1 is a paper that skipped a step.

Dimension 3: Honest disclosure of your own formation. A friend-register conversation about Scripture is not a performance of mastery. It is one person who has been doing some reading telling another person what they found. Honesty about where you started, what you thought before, and what changed for you does not have to be in a labeled section, but it does have to be present. A voice that pretends to have always known what it now knows is a voice your friend will not trust.

Dimension 4: The voice is yours. The video verifies this. The writing and the speaking sound like the same person, and that person sounds like they actually own the reasoning they are walking through. Scripted delivery is the failure mode on camera. Written-paper voice is the failure mode on the page.

Dimension 5: The voice lands. This is the make-or-break dimension and it is what the assignment is ultimately for. The writing sounds like a person explaining something to another person, not like a student stitching together a summary. Your friend would want to keep listening. Your friend would not feel preached at, lectured at, or converted at. They would feel talked with. If the voice does not land, the other four dimensions do not save the paper.

A student passes when the body of work passes on all five dimensions. Dimension 5 carries particular weight, because it is the dimension that names what this assignment is for. A student who does not yet pass receives written feedback identifying which dimensions need strengthening, and is invited to resubmit. The College's interest is in your formation, not in gatekeeping. There is no limit on the number of resubmissions. A student who arrives at the voice after three attempts has passed, and the number of attempts is not recorded in the evaluation.

A Closing Word

You are about to do something for the first time. You are about to write as a believer who is talking to another person, rather than as a student answering an assignment. The first paper was practice for this one.

You will not feel ready. That is the right feeling. Formation takes time, and the form you are practicing here will deepen across the rest of the diploma and, if you continue, across the Master of Christian Catechesis. The feeling of unreadiness is not evidence that you should not begin. It is evidence that you understand what you are beginning.

Begin.