Teaching to the Text Message
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Teaching to the Text Message
By ANDY SELSBERG
I don’t expect all my graduates to go on to Twitter-based careers, but learning how to write concisely, to express one key detail succinctly and eloquently, is an incredibly useful skill, and more in tune with most students’ daily chatter, as well as the world’s conversation. The photo caption has never been more vital.
So a few years ago, I started slipping my classes short writing assignments alongside the required papers. Once, I asked them, “Come up with two lines of copy to sell something you’re wearing now on eBay.” The mix of commerce and fashion stirred interest, and despite having 30 students in each class, I could give everyone serious individual attention. For another project, I asked them to describe the essence of the chalkboard in one or two sentences. One student wrote, “A chalkboard is a lot like memory: often jumbled, unorganized and sloppy. Even after it’s erased, there are traces of everything that’s been written on it.”
This was great, but I want to go shorter. Like many who teach, I keep thinking the perfect syllabus is a semester away — with just a few tweaks, and maybe a total pedagogical overhaul. My ideal composition class would include assignments like “Write coherent and original comments for five YouTube videos, quickly telling us why surprised kittens or unconventional wedding dances resonate with millions,” and “Write Amazon reviews, including a bit of summary, insight and analysis, for three canonical works we read this semester (points off for gratuitous modern argot and emoticons).”
The longest assignment could be a cover letter, and even that might be streamlined to a networking e-mail. I’d rather my students master skills like these than proper style for citations.
A lot can be said with a little — the mundane and the extraordinary. Philosophers like Confucius (“Learning without thought is labor lost. Thought without learning is perilous.”) and Nietzsche were kings of the aphorism.
And short isn’t necessarily a shortcut. When you have only a sentence or two, there’s nowhere to hide. I’m not suggesting that colleges eliminate long writing projects from English courses, but maybe we should save them for the second semester. Rewarding concision first will encourage students to be economical and innovative with language. Who knows, we might even start to leave behind text messages and comment threads that our civilization can be proud of.
Sometimes less is more, stronger thoughts can be expressed in less words. It is more difficult to bluntly express what you really mean instead of slowly explain what you mean.
ReplyDeleteWriting a strong statement does not always have to long. Beacuse you can always wrtie out main point of the essay in one or two sentence.
ReplyDeleteWe all want to write things out long, thinking that it will give more depth of what we are trying to say. That isn’t necessarily true.
ReplyDeleteIf you know what you want to say, it's easy to find a shorter way to do without changing the meaning.
ReplyDeleteWhen you're required to write a certain amount, you tend to state the point and than just repeat it just to write more.
ReplyDeleteShort writing is more direct and on topic than trying to stretch out a writing assignment. Writing shorter essays should be the way to go.
ReplyDeleteThis is better because then we write less, but worse because we have to think more to put the main point into a few sentences.
ReplyDeleteSometimes less is more. In narrowing things down into shorter contexts, it could be better understood than something that is written out in long paragraphs.
ReplyDeletePeople write things long because it looks better, but if you can right it short and still have the same opinion or idea as the long version, I would think that is better... But everyone is different, some like long some like short.
ReplyDeleteKids writing with originality about things they enjoy, in my opinion is the best way to get kids to learn. Sometimes less is more.
ReplyDeleteHaving quality writing is more important than quantity, if you're worried about quantity you lose sight of the purpose of your writing.
ReplyDeleteIf you know what you're talking about, you don't need an essay to explaine it, you could just do it in one sentence.
ReplyDeleteShort and to the point is not easily mistaken. While long essays may have many mistakable points. Not to mention flaws.
ReplyDeleteWriting does not have to be long, to state your point. Just short and sweet.
ReplyDeleteThe expressing of certain feeling or emotions of a person are not in long paragraphs or essays but sometimes even in one or two words or just a jesture.
ReplyDeletegood writing isnt about the length as long as it gets throught to whoever is reading it.
ReplyDeleteConsidering to write shorter papers to express ourselves is ideal. We would learn to use more complex words to profound our thoughts.
ReplyDeleteThe expressing of feelings or even everyday emotions does not involve a lot of words.
ReplyDeleteJK vadim kokopuffs said...Writing is important becouse you use it everyday life, quality writing is important and the only way you will learn it is to pratice writing XD. The better you are at writing the more shorter you can explain what you want to explain, using long awesome words.
ReplyDelete***CREDITS***
Thx AHmad for letting me use ur gmail account XD
In order for you to learn how to right long essays you must first start of with the small ones.
ReplyDeleteP.S
;) your welcome Vadim muuuuuuuaaaaaaaah!!!!
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Some people like to shorten there words to try to summarize what they want to say. I believe that it is easier to just write it out then to try and summarize it.
ReplyDelete