The point of an exercise like this is just to force you to make choices and think about them. I don't know how she used the assignment, but if it were me, I would expect different students to come up with different answers based in part on their differing weightings of what matters. Then it's an opportunity to talk about those different aspects and how they relate to each other. What's the word count? About 200? That might be more than I would give, but it's close, anyway.
I think of it as similar to giving students assignments to write précis. You are forced to boil things down, and decide what you think. Of course it's hard. I suspect the grin was a reflection of her concern that many students think that by definition writing less is easier than writing more. On Fri, Oct 22, 2010 at 5:01 PM, Louis Proyect <[email protected]> wrote: > The first class consisted of an assignment to define "what is > documentary" in a half-page, single-spaced. My frustration with the > class had a lot to do with this assignment. How do you answer something > like that in what amounted to a quarter of a page? After she gave us the > assignment, she grinned and said that it would be a real challenge to > stay within that limit. I don't know. I found that it undermined my > thought process. But then again, I probably write 10,000 words a month > so I am not typical. > _______________________________________________ > pen-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l >
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