I Just Remembered William Blake Also Died in the Movie

I’ve been thinking a lot about creating assignments because I’ll most probably pass that speech test and teach next semester. About three weeks ago, I talked to my language partner (an assignment from my speech class) Maria who is a senior in International Business. She told me about her freshman composition experience – the instructor had them watch a whole semester of Hitchcock and Simpsons – and she loved it. I was inspired and immediately came up with the idea of letting my students watch all four films of Pirates of Caribbean and have them write four different kinds of essays in relation to them. But after playing with the idea for a week or so, I decided that I couldn’t handle it. Reason one, there’s too big a risk of turning the class into an entertainment. Two, I don’t have sufficient knowledge in film study to create intelligent assignments.

Instead of using four films, I think one is all I can manage. And instead of a blockbuster, a quieter and darker film like Dead Man might be able to put the students in a more reflective mode. In my vision, the assignment coming out of the film will be a response paper. It’ll be the second essay assignment, following a personal essay and prior to an exploratory essay and a final research essay. So this essay will serve as a transition for the students who will at this point be expected to write more than just themselves and their opinions. They will be descriptive (when paraphrasing film images with words), interpretive (when reflecting on images and readings I provide), analytical (both with the film and the readings), and coherent (when putting their ideas together). They don’t need to worry about research and thesis yet, which are the things to grasp for the third and final paper.

One of the challenges for me when creating the assignment sheet will be the wording. Ideally, I’d like every word to be precise and clear so that the students will know exactly what I expect. But right now, I don’t have that clarity in my head. There’s also the question of grading – should I use rubric or holistic? Giving a percentage to the main criteria might be wise, but I’ll need to first decide what I believe are the most important things that make a good paper.