For today, we’re going to be doing a very old activity. This activity was invented by a guy named Erasmus in the 16th century, as a writing exercise for his students. 

Think back to the digital lecture on grammar and our discussion of many different ways to construct a sentence. I re-wrote the same ideas (about drinking my coffee and washing my mug) several different ways. You don’t need to remember all of the different linguistics terms for types of clauses and types of sentences. But think about how different words can be arranged into phrases that can be swapped around and changed.

Now also think about how any given word can be rephrased. Instead of “coffee,” I could have said “my caffeinated beverage” or “my warm brewed liquid made from beans that I drink in the morning” or any number of other things. I could also be more specific– let’s pretend I had a specific kind of coffee, like a latte or cappuccino.  “Coffee” is certainly the most common and simple way to express what I did, but a very similar thing could be expressed in other ways.

I could also change other words in the sentence: maybe I sipped it, or gulped it, or nursed it, or tasted it. Or I could add details: “I drank my coffee, with a dash of creamer and no sugar.” Maybe I describe the shade of brown it was, or describe the mug I used.

Point is, there’s lots of different ways I could express the same idea– that I drank my coffee.

Your Task

1. You’re going to rewrite a sentence in as MANY different ways as you possibly can.
2. Give yourself a time limit that you think will be HARD to achieve– for example, decide that you will write variations on the sentence for 10 minutes straight.
3. When you think you can’t possibly think of any more ways to rewrite the sentence, push yourself to keep going for at least 3 more variations.
4. See how many you can do!
5. After you’re done, write down a guess for how many variations Erasmus came up with himself. I’ll tell you the answer in class next week.

I won’t grade you on how many you come up with– just that you completed the activity. However, please do note down the time limit you chose.

Here is the sentence:

“Your letter pleased me greatly.”

GO!