Goldman presents The Princess Bride as the good parts version of a much longer book. The joke is that he supposedly cut the dull sections and kept the exciting ones. It hands teachers an assignment on a plate.

Ask students to abridge a chapter or a short story and explain their choices. To decide what stays and what goes, they have to understand what matters in the text. That is the real skill behind summary, and it is one many students never quite learn.

Traditional summary assignments tend to reward memory. Students list what happened, in order, and the result is a compressed retelling with no judgment in it. An abridgement with a defense adds the thinking.

The assignment has two parts. First, the shortened text itself. Second, a brief explanation of what the student cut, what they kept, and why.

What to grade in the abridgement

Score the abridgement for accuracy and coherence, and score the explanation for reasoning. A student who cuts a key scene should be able to justify it, and a student who keeps a minor detail should have a reason. The defense is where you see the understanding.

• The shortened version preserves the central events and the relationships between them
• The student does not add ideas that are not in the original text
• Cuts are purposeful and the result still reads smoothly
• The explanation names specific choices and gives reasons for each
• Language is the student's own, not copied sentences strung together

Watch for copying dressed up as summary

Some students will lift sentences from the original and trim them lightly. Set clear expectations up front about paraphrasing. A quick word limit also helps, because it forces real compression.

Look for sentences that sound much more polished than the rest of the student's writing. That mismatch is usually a clue. Ask the student to talk through the paragraph before you make any assumptions.

Feedback that develops judgment

Comments on this assignment should focus on the decision-making. Ask what a reader would lose if a particular scene were removed. If the student cannot answer, the cut probably was not thoughtful.

For large classes, an AI grading tool such as GraideMind can check the explanation section against a rubric and flag responses that only describe cuts without justifying them. You can then spend your time on the responses that need real feedback. The final scores stay with you.

Extend it across the year

This works with nearly any text, not just Goldman's. Try it with a chapter from a history text, a science article, or a short story. The skill of deciding what matters carries into research writing and test preparation.

Over time, students should need fewer words to say the same thing. Track that. It is one of the clearest signs of writing growth you can observe.