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Aufsatzmaschine!
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by Charles J. James
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Madison, Wisconsin
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| | A Writing Chain
This activity is called "Aufsatzmaschine" because it helps students produce connected, if not always coherent, prose. Students sit in a circle. There should be between seven and ten students in the circle: any more and the activity takes too long; any less and there may not be enough material at the end to make the activity interesting. Each student has a blank sheet of paper. Each student then writes a sentence, in German, on any topic of their choosing or on a predetermined topic, if the teacher wishes. Then each student passes his or her paper to the student on the right (or left, if you prefer). The students silently read the sentence they just received and write a second sentence under it, preferably fitting the one above it. Then the students pass their papers in the same direction to the next students. The students read the two sentences and write a third one to go with them. They pass their papers in the same direction again, read the three sentences, and write a fourth one to go with them. This continues until each student gets his or her original paper back, at which point the student writes one last sentence, finishing off what he or she started seven to ten sentences ago!
The result should be a text that more or less hangs together to make some kind of story or description or other prose form; even poetry sometimes comes out of it. Each student reads his or her paper aloud, attempting to give it some kind of coherence. As a homework assignment, the students edit their papers so they make sense. This activity works best with students who have a basic command of the language plus enough vocabulary to move in and out of whatever freewheeling narrative comes up.
Below is an edited sample of a student production from a recent composition/conversation course. Each sentence in the text was written by a different student, starting and ending with the student labeled as "Student A."
Sample Result
Student A: Ich komme aus Colorado. Und ich mag den Schnee. Ich gehe schilaufen. Mein Bruder hat in Aspen gearbeitet. Seine Arbeit gefällt ihm sehr, weil es so viele Schneehäschen dort gibt. Die Berge sind hoch. Ich möchte bergsteigen. Ich will auf den Bergen zelten gehen mit meinem Dinty Moore Fleisch Gulasch und gutem Wisconsin Käse. Jedenfalls kann ich meinen Weg nicht zurück finden. Es macht aber nichts; eines der Schneehäschen wird bestimmt gleich vorbeikommen.
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