When Less is More: The Fifty-Word Writing Assignment

When Less Is More: The Fifty-Word Writing Assignment

Professor Kate Vieira
Department of Curriculum and Instruction
UW-Madison

50-word assignments are sentences (no longer than 50 words!) that answer a challenging question about the reading.

The purpose of 50-word assignments is to:

• consolidate your knowledge of the reading in preparation for discussion
• analyze key issues in the reading
• in light of our course’s topic, pay close attention to word choice and language
• develop your sentence fluency—a skill that will serve you well in longer writing projects

Here’s the first one:

In a sentence no longer than 50 words (the 51st word will suffer a terrible fate!) answer the following question:

According to your reading for today, what is the standard English myth, and which linguistic facts of life support the notion that standard English is a “myth” and not a “reality”?

Criteria for Assessment

To earn a “Late stage” designation: 50-word assignments will directly answer the posed question in a coherent, complete, accurate way; will reflect deep understanding of the reading; and will stay within the word limit.

If your 50-word assignment does not receive a “Late stage of revision” designation, you may revise it based on my feedback to try for a better grade.

*Professor Vieira uses “contract grading,” a form of grading in which an instructor and students cooperate on a contracted number of assignments of specified quality that correspond to specific letter grades.