Three Types of Exercise

By Ashley Lister

As a teacher and a writer I work with three types of writing exercise.

The first type is the sort used in the classroom. It’s a timed exercise designed to get students writing. These are usually ‘on-demand’ type exercises where students write haikus, limericks, cinquains etc. The purpose of these exercises is to get students familiar with the form being discussed and to garner proof that learning has taken place.

One of the questions I’m encouraged to ask as a teacher is: How do I know learning has taken place? My answer takes the logical solution: If I taught a student how to write a haiku, and they then wrote a haiku, it suggests they’ve learnt how to write haiku.

A couple of my fellow bloggers this week have expressed frustration with the restrictions and artificiality imposed by timed classroom exercises. Whilst the writer in me sympathises with this point of view, I’d still argue that the exercises are useful for the teacher.

From the writer’s perspective, timed classroom exercises work best when they can be recreated at home. That way the writer has the scope to properly use the exercise but without the pressure of meeting unreasonable standards set by peers.

The second type of writing exercise is the sort that’s solely intended to be done at home. For these, in my classes, I’ll give a theme or the opening paragraph to a story and ask learners to create a short piece of fiction to share with the rest of the class the following week.

Last week I used the opening pages from a piece of werewolf fiction I’d written. (One of my students had been asking why I never used my own writing in class – I figured this was the easiest way to address that question). The class’s responses produced a lot of differing results. Few had gone for the traditional approach to telling a werewolf story. One had simply gone to see the latest Twilight film and told me the plot of that movie. Some of the stories were dark – dark even for werewolf stories. Some of them were whimsical. All of them had been written when the writers had the time and enthusiasm to engage with the subject. This level of personal involvement showed in the quality of the writing.

From a writer’s perspective, I think these are the exercises which I prefer. I can do them at my own pace, in my own writing place, and without the pressure demanded by the need for immediate quality results.

The third type, in my mind, is the sort of exercise used for creating fresh ideas. Creating ideas can be daunting for any new writer and these are the sorts of collaborative classroom exercises where we share our suggestions and bounce them off other people in the room. It’s a chance to voice ideas to others, see how they’re received, and to also get an insight into the way peers are thinking. In short: it’s a chance to hear some unusual ideas which can often prove tangentially inspirational.

One of my favourite exercises in this type is adapted from Margaret Geraghty’s The Five Minute Writer. Learners are expected to spend five minutes compiling a short list in response to the question: What does it feel like to…?

My personal responses to this included items such as:

What does it feel like to run a marathon?

What does it feel like to lick a hedgehog?

What does it feel like to taste an emotion?

During classes this week learners came up with such diverse responses as:

What does it feel like to be dead?

What does it feel like to be truly loved?

What does it feel like to be high?

Your exercise for this Saturday morning, should you wish to participate, is to produce five original responses to that question: What does it feel like to…?

I’d be interested to see your answers below. And if I don’t respond immediately today, it’s because I’m up in Kendal reading poetry at the Brewery Arts Centre (http://www.breweryarts.co.uk/event-detail.cfm?id=2142&type=7) . If I get a chance to see you there it would be great.