Re: formulaic writing, a different take?, reply

[Denise Rogers <drogers@linknet.net>]

Lynne and others,

>
>I did have one student this spring who wanted out of that prison.
>Not only had he been taught the three-point theme, but also he
>had been taught that theme needed a certain number of sentences.

I'm curious as to what the results has been for teachers who have
established word-length requirements. I've been opposed to this in general,
but a couple of semesters ago in my developmental English class, I required
an essay of 700 words and was quite surprised at the improvements in terms
of content for several of the students. This wasn't "padding" either,
unless they thought it was. One of the students in the class had seldom
written more than two pages before, and here he wrote something like five
and a half. He made interesting assertions and developed them as he never
had before (this was on the final, by the way, and the topics had not been
announced beforehand).

Has anyone else experimented with this (word-length requirements)?

Denise Rogers
University of Southwestern Louisiana