Of the two exercises, B comes closer to filling the linguistic function of Phase 5: student practice in extended discourse as interpolation of a text.  Exercise A will encourage interpolation, but only as individual sentences within a visual context that serves as a substitute for verbal linkages.

     Thus if students had a photograph of a group of soldiers who were prisoners of war, they might be able to insert a caption for one soldier reading "Drei Jahre Soldat und wir haben nur Hunger und Tod" and for another the caption "Und ich habe auch ein schlimmes Bein."  A second picture might offer opportunities to elaborate on other details ("auch meine Eltern sind tot" "andere Personen wohnen in unserem Haus").

     Such activities encourage language use, but the language produced has only implied, not verbally expressed connections between these scenes and these individuals.  Just as comic books are easier to read than prose texts, such captions are easier to write than their elaborated prose counterparts would be, since those prose versions would have to explain who is speaking to whom, who responds, where they are or why the scene shifts to another locale.  As a preparatory exercise for such vital prose elaborations, however, the picture series works.  It also provides opportunities for verbal presentation and discussion that build toward specification of details based on the imagination of individual students or small groups.

     It should also be kept in mind that this exercise as described relies on a "generic" wartime situation with styles of devastation and the impact of war on soldiers' and civilians' lives --these experiences are interchangeable, regardless of time and place.  In this sense, such activities actually foster a perception that is culturally inaccurate, since such details reflect different cultures and the ways they deal with their own histories.  Consequently, if culture or community standards are to be emphasized, this task should be augmented with an activity stressing similarities and differences between any war, and the situation in Borchert's play.  Differences such as length of time at war, scope of battles (world-wide or local), scope of destruction (infrastructure, agriculture), populations affected (civil war versus outside attackers) all should be identified in class discussion, if not in the assignment itself.

     Exercise B fulfills the function of asking for a potentially longer piece of writing.  As an interpolation of the text, however, the task is not sufficiently linked to Borchert's work. Without some language explicitly relating student writing to the scene between Beckmann and Frau Kramer, the results will probably be both linguistically and contextually quite different from the Borchert model. The lacuna could be remedied if the assignment included the phrase "using the language and situation in Beckmann's scene with Frau Kramer, write a story. . . ."  Such framing may seem superfluous, but, in practice, it is critical if students are to use the language of the text as their linguistic and contextual model.

 Phase 5:  Long-Genre Exercises: Grade 8
 Phase 5:  Long-Genre Exercises: Grade 12