Brian,
   I have developed a couple of assignments in part because of the same
concern. One is a "belief or value" paper, which asks the student to
explain a belief or value (lots of conversation to set that up) and
explore its experiential roots. In that assignment, they are not
allowed to argue. I sometimes do that as an opening to a three step
sequence, the second being an exploration of why someone else would
think differently and the third being a persuasive version of the
opening paper. But students often find the belief or value version very
valuable in its own right.
   Another assignment I term "a present time look at past experience." The
focus is generally around the changing perspective of the writer. As
he/she looks back, there are often two "I"'s involved, the "I" who went
through it and the "I" who now understands it in a more substantial
way. For a frequently anthologized esaay that fits that form, I
sometimes use Paule Marshall's "Poets in the Kitchen", where she looks
back at the experience of listening to the language of her mom and
mom's friends and their influence on her as a writer. I think she is
very much aware that she is not giving the usual answer to questions
about influence, but she is very careful to present this as her own
evolving perspective, even saying things like "I had no way of
understanding it at the time but..."
   I think the best writers have a way of sharing insight and perspective
without seeming argumentative about it. We need some way of valuing
that perspective, the presence of the perspective, even controlling
presence, without thinking of it as an argument. So if that's a thesis,
perhaps non-argumentative thesis would be a subcategory. If the writer
makes us laugh at how stupid he was, then we may simply be remembering
or reinforcing something we know full well already.
   We also find ourselves, I think, writing about subjects that we want to
say more than one thing about. Journalists do that all the time with
"feature stories". Maybe that's what's meant by "exposition." The
article may include a number of perspectives, including perspectives
other than the writer's, without necessarily being invested in any one
of them.
   I like your instincts. Abandoning a "thesis" (as argument) doesn't mean
you don't have a purpose.

Craig
   >


Do you think that the insistence that every paper should have a thesis,
> along with the related insistence that everything is an argument, has come
> as a reaction against Bain's "modes of discourse" and all the many
> textbooks that incorporated that theory? As i understand it, the modes
> artificially and reductively turned the functions of persuasion,
> description and exposition into separate genres which often seemed
> vacuum-packed rather than overlapping or interpenetrating. So some
> students learned that a "thesis" was only needed in something called a
> "perusaisve essay" or a" thesis-support essay"--and this, in turn, seemed
> to mean that other kinds of writing, like description or personal
> narrative, didn't need a point or a sense of rhetorical purpose.
>
> This assumption--or rather, learned belief-- on the part of students was
> one of my pet peeves when I started teaching writing; so I tried to get
> students to have some kind of "thesis" in everything they wrote. Now I
> still try to get them to have a sense of rhetorical purpose in pretty much
> everything, except maybe journals written only for themselves; but I try
> to be clearer that this purpose doesn't always (depending on genre on
> rhetorical situation) have to be something that could easily be summarized
> in a sentence or two.
>
> Brian
> ________________________________________
> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
> [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Peter Adams [[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: Monday, June 08, 2009 11:04 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Necessity of a thesis; was ATEG Digest - 7 Jun 2009 to 8 Jun
> 2009 - Special issue (#2009-143)
>
> Scott raises another issue which I have never really understood . . .
> although I have taught writing for more than 30 years.  What do people
> mean by expository writing?  Is it different from argument?  I used to
> think I understood.  Argument has a thesis, proves a point.  Expository
> writing simply informs.  But then does it have a thesis too?  And if it
> does, doesn't that make it an argument?  How is esposiition different from
> argument?  Does it try to prove a point, a thesis, but in a less
> argumentative way?  Is it an argument that is more balanced?  Or, as
> Lunsford and Ruszkiewicz put it, is "everthing an argument"?
>
> Peter
>
>
> On Jun 8, 2009, at 10:24 PM, Scott wrote:
>
> Expository writing uses a thesis; descriptive writing, a motif.
> In Senior English the mid-term examination included a descriptive
> writing assignment.  I started, “Once a man passed by and saw a
> field of weeds, then I passed by and said, ‘Yesterday’s flowers
> am I’, for what is a weed but a flower that no one loves.”  I
> continued in the same motif.  It may sound silly today but it was
> genuine when I wrote it.  No thesis needed.
>
> N. Scott Catledge
> P.S.  The longest string of garbage in the posting to which I am replying
> was my previous post—-almost 20 pages.
> I wonder about dropping digest and getting them one at a time.
>
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