Two activities

For my first writing assignment, I plan to ask students to argue a position concerning how a written fictional text is complicated by its film adaptation. To help students think about the differences between written and visual texts, I could stage a debate. The students could argue which is the better means of communication: books or films. This activity, as Anne Curzan and Lisa Damour suggest, will encourage students to challenge each other’s beliefs about the effectiveness of each medium. Besides the debate, I could also have each student write a short personal narrative. Then I could have each one write a short screenplay and storyboard for a movie adaptation of the story. This activity, as John Bean suggests, would encourage critical thinking about the advantages and limitations of a film adaptation of a book. Both activities will help the students discover each medium’s strengths and weaknesses, giving them possible explanations to account for why and how the book they choose to write their papers on differs from its film adaptation. The goal of this writing assignment is for students to learn how to analyze two texts. Part of analysis is identifying the qualities of a particular text. In this case, analysis means recognizing how a visual text works and that it works differently than a visual text.