Minced Words

What follows is an in-class activity I am developing for the first week of class; I will introduce the assignment on Monday in order to give my students the week to prepare. On the following Friday, the students will bring two printed copies of their favorite song lyrics to class; I will have extra lyrics if any happen to forget.

The activity asks that each student reduce the lyrics to one of her or his favorite songs by 75% in order to see which words--nouns and verbs--are the most important in a sentence. By having the students choose which song they use, hopefully this assignment encourages them to take an interest in words, to see them as more than just a classroom activity dealing with the parts of speech. If the students can see that someone--Clint Black, for instance-- uses words to express himself, perhaps this assignment could spark an interest in wordsmithing that will help the students to better communicate in writing for a variety of tasks.

Class Activity: Minced Words

For today’s class, you should have brought in two printouts of the lyrics to a favorite song of yours. In order to make sure they fit into the in-class exercise I have planned, you should also have cleared the song (and its lyrics) with me beforehand.

If you did not clear the song with me—really, that’s to make sure there are enough words in the song, not to censor you—or if you did not remember to bring your song lyrics to class: see me. I brought in a pile of lyrics to my favorite songs just in case.

Here’s what we are going to do (I saw ‘we’ because I’m doing it too!):

1. Count each word to the song and write that number somewhere on the front page of each set of lyrics.

2. On one copy, scratch out half the words and make a note of your new number. (100 words cut in half is 50 and on and on… If you have an odd number, round up before dividing.) Once you are satisfied with

a. The goal is to eliminate words that don’t really bare a lot of meaning. Try to cut the words that don’t add to your interpretation of the song. For example: The goal is to eliminate words that don’t really bare a lot of meaning.

3. Once you have eliminated half the words to your satisfaction, scratch out the same words on the other copy of the lyrics.

4. Now we’ll repeat step two… this might be difficult. Hard to choose! If you end up with an odd number, round up then divide by two to calculate how many words to cut (7 rounds to 8, 8/2 = 4, cut four words). The goal here is to remove those words that have less meaning than the other remaining words.

a. example: The goal is to eliminate words that don’t really bare a lot of meaning.

5. Repeat step three again. Now… so very few words remain! Once you have finished, clearly print your name on either copy of the song lyrics and bring that copy to me.

After everyone is finished, we’ll discuss what we’ve found out about the importance of words and how we can relate that to writing academic essays. This activity counts as your in-class writing for today.

BONUS: If you want to earn five bonus points (2.5%) toward your final grade in the class, take the song you chose for this activity and write 2-3 pages about it; you’ll be explicating—which concerns the process of "unfolding" and of "making clear”—the meaning of the song. Introduce the song, tell me what you interpret as its meaning and then conclude by discussing how you arrived at that meaning. Because this assignment is extra, it knows no due-date. I’d prefer it before Midterm, but, because you choose to do extra, turn it in whenever you’d like.