Monday, February 27, 2006

For those interested...

I contacted the instructor who sent his English students to the fiction remix wiki, and he said these were the instructions he gave to his students.

My Honors English class (ninth graders) has a weekly discussion board assignment. Many of them are a couple weeks behind, so there may be activity on the board for a while yet, but I think about half of them have given it a shot...some more successfully than others. Here are the instructions they revceived from me:

1) Go to this web site and read the story called "To Build a Fire" by Jack London: http://www.jacklondons.net/buildafire.html

2) After reading the original story in its entirety, you will have noticed that, while it is a great story, the language is rather dated. Some of the words are no longer in use, and sometimes it just doesn't sound modern. (That's because it isn't.) Your task for this week will be to revise one paragraph of the story to make it more accessible to modern readers. In other words, you will "translate" one paragraph of the story into regular, modern language. The way you will do this is by going to the web site that you will find at the bottom of these instructions.

3) When you get to the web site, the paragraphs at the top are the ones that have already been revised. Read through what has already been done and select the next available paragraph in the story. (It will be below the "Contents" links, so you'll need to scroll down.) Following the example of the paragraphs that are already done, "translate" your paragraph into something that would be easier for a modern reader to understand by clicking the "edit" link next to the paragraph. When you finish, hit "Save passage" and your revised paragraph will appear with the others. When we are done, we will have a completely revised version of the story.

4) You may look at the new version compared to the old version by clicking the "history" tab and then selecting "Compare selected versions."

5) When you finish, return here [to the discussion board] and post a report of which paragraph you revised and what you did to make it easier for modern readers. Also note any other changes you made or problems you had with the process of using the web site.

Here's where you can find the original version of the story:
http://www.jacklondons.net/buildafire.html

Here's where you go to revise a paragraph of it: http://www.editthis.info/fictionrem...To_Build_a_Fire

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Marion,
This is your cousin Val. I was dinkin' around online and I came across your blog. I just wanted to say hi and congrats on the success of your book. It's great. Drop me an email sometime. My wife and I are living in SLC right now for a few months. My email is tengaio@hotmail.com. I'll talk to you later.
Val