"Professor, could you rephrase the prompt?"

Yesterday was mostly set aside for workshopping the students' papers. Just over half of the class (about 15 students) brought the amount of copies they were supposed to bring; five students brought one copy; two students didn't show up; two students brought outlines; and 2 students brought nothing.

Those who brought three copies got into groups of three; those who brought one copy worked nicely together, and asked lots of questions for clarity; those who brought outlines held discussion, asked me questions, and drafted while in-class; and those who brought nothing, and asked nothing (until I walked up to them), DID NOTHING.

When I noticed that they weren't doing anything but whispering back and forth to one another, I approached them, and asked them what sections they were writing their papers on; they hadn't decided, so I suggested looking at the Content page, and asked them which chapter they thought might be most interesting to work with, and they said they weren't sure... Was this a test? Yes, I thought it was. I asked if I could help in any way to make anything clearer, they made no sudden movements to suggest that they would answer, and so I shrugged and turned to walk away. That's when I heard it:

"Professor, could you rephrase the prompt?"

Ah, the problem isn't laziness, it's my not being clear enough. I felt horrible, so I asked them which part they were having trouble with, and then they looked at each other quickly before looking at me again:
"all of it" one of them said.  All of it? ... All?  I was going to ask a question (I don't even know what. I was so dumbfounded, but felt I should ask a question at such a moment as that) when one of the students asked "What is 'coming to terms'?" and the other followed with, "and what is 'forwarding'?"...

I reiterated what we'd been talking about in class,  brought up the examples we'd discussed, and asked them to open up their all-too-clean Harris texts, and then it came out:

"Oh, well, I haven't done the reading."
...
"Me neither." 
... 
*face-palm* 

I looked over the prompt with them again quickly, pointed out that they would need to use each of the two texts in order to write the essay, and then suggested that they take the time they had to get going on it.

I later saw my two students up in the WC and overheard them asking the tutors the same questions they asked me...

I'm not looking forward to reading their papers. I felt bad about their not understanding... until they told me (and so flippantly, too) that they just hadn't done the work.