Suggested course level

Lower level undergraduate

Activity purpose

• Students will practice editing and revising a letter.

Materials required

• Enough copies of the letter for the entire class (multiple copies per page, cut apart)
• A document camera

Activity instructions

1. Distribute the copies of the letter to students.
2. Ask them to revise/edit the letter/message to make it more concise, less repetitive, to use the you attitude, and to use an appropriate style and tone for the context.
3. Tell students this will be an anonymous activity and they should not write their name on the paper. They can write their revised letter on the same page or on another sheet of paper.
4. Tell students you will collect their writing and will sort through them and select a couple of examples to review with the class.
5. As students finish writing the letter, collect them and begin sorting through them to select 2-3 to review with the class using the document camera.
6. Take each example and put it under the document camera. As the class to provide feedback on what works well and what could be improved. (Always starts with what works well and always highlight what works well in each and every example.)
7. Repeat with as many examples as necessary.

Debrief questions / activities

• When placing the examples under the document camera, ask the class what works well and what could be improved for each one.
• Volunteer an initial response, if students are reluctant to draw attention to what could be improved.

Activity variations

• Students could discuss each example under the document camera for a minute with the person beside them before contributing to the class discussion.

Additional resources / supplementary resources

• Ashman,Melissa_RewritingALetter-Concision-YouAttitude_Handout  PDF
• Ashman,Melissa_RewritingALetter-Concision-YouAttitude_Handout Word

Tags: writing mechanics, grammar, style, tone, concision, you attitude, hands-on, individual, creating a product or document