Week 13 · Lecture outline

Week 13 — Lecture Outline · Revision & Style

English Composition · ENGL 1A Fall 2026 · Prof. Lindgren Fictional sample

Course: English Composition (ENGL 1A) · Silver Oak University (fictional sample) · Prof. Lindgren
Objectives covered: Objective 7 — Revise globally (resee structure, thesis, argument, evidence) and edit locally for style.
SLOs touched: A (compose clear, well-organized, audience-aware prose) · B (revisited — revising a source-based argument from W12)
Meeting pattern: 2 sessions × 75 min = 150 min. Holiday note: Thanksgiving (Nov 26–27) removes this week's second session — campus is closed. Run Session 1 live on Tue Nov 24; deliver Session 2's segments asynchronously (recorded mini-lecture + the module) or fold them into the studio. Segment minutes below total ~150; scale to your own pattern.

Week at a Glance


The week's big question	"My draft is done — so why isn't it good yet? What's the difference between re-seeing my argument and polishing my commas, and how do I cut and shape sentences so they're stronger?"
By the end of the week, students can…	(1) tell global revision (structure, thesis, argument, evidence) from local editing (sentences, surface); (2) cut a wordy passage by ~25% with no loss of meaning (concision); (3) build sentence variety (mix short/long, vary openings, combine choppy sentences); (4) use emphasis (end-weight, key idea in the main clause) and choose active vs. passive voice on purpose.
Key vocabulary	global revision, local editing, re-seeing, reverse outline, concision, wordiness, deadwood, redundancy, empty intensifier, nominalization, sentence variety, choppy/run-on, coordination/subordination, emphasis, end-weight, the emphatic position, main clause, active voice, passive voice, voice/style, clarity
Materials	slides (Deck 13), the week's readings + Study Hall "Revision Techniques" video, one approved chatbot (Gemini / Claude / ChatGPT) for the AI-critique moment and the tutorial, a draft to revise (last week's essay works perfectly)
Timing note	8 segments, ~150 min total. Session 1 = Segments 1–4 (~75), live Tue Nov 24. Session 2 = Segments 5–8 (~75) — delivered asynchronously this week because of the Thanksgiving holiday (no Thursday meeting).

Segment 1 — Hook & the Promise (8 min) · Session 1 opens

Hook. Put one sentence on a slide and read it aloud, deadpan:

"In light of the fact that the committee made the decision to postpone the event, due to the reason that the weather was bad, we will be rescheduling it for a later date in the future." (36 words)

Ask: "What's wrong with this sentence?" Let them flail — then the reveal: "Nothing is wrong. Every word is spelled right; the grammar is fine. It's just fat." Now cut it live, out loud, and count:

"Because the weather was bad, the committee postponed the event and will reschedule it." (14 words)

Same meaning, about 60% shorter, and better. "That move — cutting without losing meaning — is the single most useful thing you'll learn about style. This week we learn it on purpose."

The promise (write it on the board): "By Sunday you'll cut a wordy passage by a quarter without losing a thing, and you'll know the difference between re-seeing your argument and polishing your commas."

Why it matters line (memory hook): "A C draft and an A draft usually have the same ideas. The A draft has been re-seen and sharpened — not made longer."

Segment 2 — Global Revision vs. Local Editing (22 min)

Plain language first. Back in Week 1 we drew a line: revision re-sees; editing cleans up. This week we deepen it and give the two passes their full names.

Global revision = re-seeing the big stuff: Is the thesis clear and arguable? Is the structure in the right order? Does each paragraph earn its place? Is the argument complete — claims supported, warrants doing their job, counterargument answered? Is any evidence missing or off-point? Global revision can move paragraphs, cut whole sections, rewrite the thesis, and reorder the argument. (The "does this actually work?" pass.)
Local editing = improving sentences and surface: concision, sentence variety, word choice, emphasis, voice — and (next week) grammar, punctuation, and typos. Local editing makes the prose itself clear and strong.

The rule that earns or loses the most points (put it on a slide):

You cannot revise globally and edit locally at the same time. The brain hunting comma errors can't also see whether the whole argument is in the wrong order. Big pass first, small pass second.

Why order matters (say it): "If you spend an hour polishing the sentences in a paragraph, then realize the paragraph doesn't belong and cut it — you wasted the hour. Fix the structure before you fix the sentences."

The reverse-outline tool (global revision in 5 minutes). After a draft, write one phrase per paragraph in the margin — just the job each paragraph does. Then read only that list. If the list doesn't make a sensible argument in a sensible order, your structure needs revision (not your commas). This is the fastest global-revision move there is.

This week's center of gravity is local editing — style: concision, variety, emphasis, voice. Global revision is the frame; the hands-on craft this week is sharpening prose. (Full grammar/mechanics editing is Week 14.)

Segment 3 — Concision: Cut the Deadwood (25 min)

Plain language first. Concision does not mean "fewest words." It means every word earns its place — concise writing uses the strongest words and cuts the ones doing no work. (The Purdue OWL puts it well in the linked reading: concise writing isn't always the shortest, but it always uses the most effective words.) Wordiness is the most common style problem in first-year writing, and it's the most fixable.

The four kinds of deadwood (put them on a slide, one line each):
- Wordiness / inflated phrases — long phrases that a single word replaces. "due to the fact that" → because; "in the event that" → if; "at this point in time" → now; "has the ability to" → can.
- Redundancy — saying the same thing twice. "end result," "past history," "advance planning," "combine together," "each and every," "completely eliminate." Cut one half.
- Empty intensifiers / filler — words that add length, not meaning. "very," "really," "quite," "actually," "basically," "in order to," "the fact that," "there is/there are" openings.
- Nominalizations / weak verbs — a strong verb buried in a noun. "made a decision" → decided; "gave consideration to" → considered; "is reflective of" → reflects.

One fully worked example — cut ~25% with no loss of meaning (do it at the board, thinking aloud; instructor's own sentence).

Before (29 words): "It is important to note that the main reason why the program was ultimately successful in the end was due to the fact that the volunteers were very dedicated."

Diagnose, out loud:
- "It is important to note that" — filler; cut it (just say the thing).
- "the main reason why … was … was due to the fact that" — a wordy "the reason X is because Y." Replace with because.
- "ultimately … in the end" — redundant; keep one (or neither).
- "very dedicated" — drop the empty intensifier; dedicated is already strong.

After (8 words): "The program succeeded because its volunteers were dedicated." — a 72% cut, and the meaning is intact and clearer.

Name the target (on a slide): "Try to cut any draft passage by about 25%. You'll almost always find the words — and the passage gets stronger, not weaker."

Misconception + cure (say it now):
- ❌ "If I cut words, I'll lose meaning / lose my ideas."
✅ Cure: you cut deadwood, not ideas. "The program succeeded because its volunteers were dedicated" says everything the 28-word version did — it just stops wasting the reader's time. Concision protects meaning by clearing the clutter around it.

Segment 4 — Misconceptions + Quick Interaction (20 min) · Session 1 closes (~75)

Name the misconceptions out loud, then cure each:

❌ "Revising means proofreading — fixing spelling and grammar."
✅ Cure: that's editing/proofreading (and it's next week). Revision is re-seeing — and global revision re-sees structure and argument. Proofreading a draft whose argument is broken just polishes a broken thing.
❌ "Longer / fancier writing is stronger writing."
✅ Cure: no. Inflated phrasing and big words don't impress a reader — they slow one down. Concision is strength. A reader trusts prose that respects their time.
❌ "Cutting words means losing meaning."
✅ Cure: you cut the words that carry no meaning — filler, redundancy, empty intensifiers. The meaning lives in the strong words you keep. (Segment 3's example proves it.)
❌ "Passive voice is grammatically wrong / always bad."
✅ Cure: passive voice is correct grammar and a legitimate tool. "The samples were refrigerated overnight" is perfectly good when the doer doesn't matter. Passive is a choice, not an error — use it on purpose, not by accident.
❌ "I can revise the structure and fix the sentences in one pass."
✅ Cure: you can't, well. Re-seeing the whole argument and hunting commas are different jobs for different attention. Big pass first, small pass second.

Interaction — Deadwood Hunt (rapid-fire, ~10 min):
Put four wordy snippets on a slide (instructor's own). Students cut each — solo (30 sec), then with a neighbor (1 min) — and count the words saved:
1. "At this point in time, we are not in a position to make a decision." → "We can't decide now."
2. "There are many students who feel that the policy is unfair." → "Many students feel the policy is unfair."
3. "The essay was written by me in a very careful manner." → "I wrote the essay carefully."
4. "Due to the fact that it was raining, the game was cancelled." → "Because it was raining, the game was cancelled."
Debrief: notice #3 also flipped passive → active ("was written by me" → "I wrote") and turned a wordy adverb phrase ("in a very careful manner") into one word ("carefully"). Concision, voice, and emphasis travel together.

Segment 5 — Worked Move: Variety & Emphasis (22 min) · Session 2 opens (delivered async this week)

Hook back in: "Last session: cut the fat. Now make what's left move. Two moves — sentence variety and emphasis — turn clear prose into strong prose."

Move 1 — Combine choppy sentences for variety (worked at the board; instructor's own).
Plain language: too many short sentences in a row read like a list and feel childish; too many long ones exhaust the reader. Mix lengths, and combine choppy sentences using coordination (and/but/so) or subordination (because/although/which).

Choppy (4 short sentences, 24 words): "The hurricane hit the coast. It was a category three. Thousands of people lost power. The repairs took weeks."
Combined for variety (1–2 sentences, 22 words): "When the category-three hurricane hit the coast, thousands lost power, and the repairs took weeks." — subordination ("when…") folds the rating in; the short follow-up could stay short for punch.
Name the move: we didn't just shorten — we varied the rhythm and showed the relationships between ideas (the hurricane caused the outage) that four flat sentences hid.

Move 2 — Vary your openings.
Plain language: if every sentence starts with The / It / This / I, prose drones. Change the opener and you change the emphasis. (One instructor sentence, three openings:)

"The committee finally approved the budget after months of debate."
→ "After months of debate, the committee finally approved the budget." (opens on the struggle)
→ "Finally, after months of debate, the budget was approved." (opens on the relief)

Move 3 — Emphasis: end-weight + the main clause (worked at the board; instructor's own).
Plain language: readers remember the end of a sentence most — that's the emphatic position. And the idea you most want to land belongs in the main clause, not buried in a subordinate one. Put the important thing last and in the main clause.

Buried (key idea — that the bill passed — is stranded in the middle): "The bill, which passed after a close vote, was about clean water, although few noticed."
Re-shaped for emphasis (key idea moved to the emphatic end, in the main clause): "Although few noticed, the close vote was about clean water — and the bill passed."
Name the move: same facts; we moved the bill passed to the end and into the main clause, so the sentence lands on what matters.

Misconception + cure:
- ❌ "Variety means making every sentence long and complex."
✅ Cure: variety means mixing. A short, punchy sentence after two long ones is one of the strongest moves in prose. Don't trade choppy-and-short for monotonous-and-long. Vary.

Segment 6 — Active vs. Passive Voice — A Tool, Not an Error (18 min)

Plain language first. In active voice, the subject does the action: "The committee postponed the event." In passive voice, the subject receives it: "The event was postponed by the committee" (or, dropping the doer, "The event was postponed"). Passive is built from a form of to be + a past participle.

Default to active — it's usually clearer, shorter, and stronger:

"Mistakes were made and the report was delayed by the team" (passive, 10 words, evasive)
→ "The team made mistakes and delayed the report" (active, 8 words, names who acted).

But passive is the right choice when (put these on a slide):
- The doer is unknown or irrelevant: "The samples were refrigerated overnight." (Who refrigerated them doesn't matter.)
- The receiver is the real topic: "The bridge was built in 1932." (The bridge is the subject of the paragraph, not the builders.)
- You deliberately want to de-emphasize the actor: sometimes appropriate, sometimes evasive — "Mistakes were made" famously hides responsibility. Know which you're doing.

The rule (on a slide): "Default to active. Reach for passive on purpose — when the doer is unknown, irrelevant, or rightly de-emphasized. Passive isn't wrong; accidental passive that just muddies who did what is the problem."

Quick interaction: put three sentences up; students flip each passive→active (or judge that passive is fine and say why): (1) "The window was broken by the storm." → "The storm broke the window." (2) "The vaccine was administered to 4,000 patients." → passive is fine (patients/vaccine are the topic; doer irrelevant). (3) "It was decided by the board that fees would be raised." → "The board decided to raise fees."

Segment 7 — Style Tools + Technology Workflow (20 min)

Plain language first. A few concrete tools make revision and style less mysterious:

The reverse outline (Segment 2): one phrase per paragraph → check the structure before the sentences. The fastest global tool.
Read it aloud: your ear catches wordiness, choppiness, accidental passive, and a buried point faster than your eye. The fastest local tool.
Hunt the usual suspects: search your draft for very, really, in order to, the fact that, there is/there are, due to the fact that — each is a place a cut is probably waiting.
The 25% challenge: pick any paragraph and try to cut a quarter of the words. The act of trying surfaces the deadwood.

Technology workflow — the word processor + a chatbot, used the right way:
1. Revise and edit in a word processor — keep the "before" so you can see your cuts. (Track Changes or a saved copy.)
2. Use a chatbot to react and probe, not to author: "Here's my paragraph. Where am I wordy? Which sentences are choppy? Is anything buried that should be at the end?" Then you make the cuts, in your own words.
3. Never paste a chatbot's "improved" paragraph in as your own. It tends to flatten your voice and sometimes changes your meaning while "tightening."

AI-critique moment (students verify, not consume) — the signature catch this week:

Paste a paragraph of your own writing (with some personality in it) to an approved chatbot: "Make this more concise and professional."
Then read its rewrite critically against today's lesson. You'll usually catch one or more of these:
- Voice erased into boilerplate — it replaces your phrasing with stiff, generic corporate prose ("It is imperative to note that…," "In conclusion, this demonstrates…") that no longer sounds like you. That's not "professional" — it's bland.
- Meaning quietly changed — in the name of "tightening," it drops a qualifier or merges two ideas and now your sentence claims something you didn't mean. Concision must never change the claim.
- Fake concision — sometimes it makes the passage longer or adds throat-clearing while calling it "polished."
That's the lesson: a chatbot will gladly trade your voice and even your meaning for surface "professionalism." Cutting deadwood is the goal; cutting you is the failure. The habit all term: the tool drafts, you judge — and this week, you protect your voice and your meaning.

Segment 8 — Callback, Tease & Hand-off (15 min) · Session 2 closes (~75)

Callback + tease:
- Callback: "Week 1 we said revision re-sees; editing cleans up. This week we lived it — global revision re-sees structure and argument; local editing (concision, variety, emphasis, voice) sharpens the prose. The essay you wrote last week is exactly the thing to revise."
- Tease next week: "This week was style — making sentences strong. Next week is editing/proofreading — making them correct: fragments, comma splices, run-ons, agreement, and punctuation. We've been re-seeing and sharpening; next week we clean up the surface, so a great argument isn't undercut by a comma splice in the first line."

Hand-off (the week's graded work):
- Lecture Tutorial 13 (AI tutor, share-link submission) — global vs. local revision; concision; sentence variety; emphasis; active/passive.
- Quiz 13 (end of week) and Discussion 13 ("Can Concision Go Too Far?").
- Assignment 13 ("The Revision Workshop") — global-revise a draft, cut a wordy passage ~25%, vary a choppy passage, fix a weak passive/emphasis sentence.
- Writing Studio 13 ("Cut a Quarter, Then Reshape") — cut a wordy passage ~25% without losing meaning, reshape it for variety and emphasis, self-/peer-review it, then coach and critique it with a chatbot.

Instructor FAQ — Common Stumbles

Student says / does	Quick cure
Confuses revision with proofreading.	Revision re-sees (and global revision re-sees structure/argument); proofreading fixes surface. Polishing a broken argument just shines a broken thing. The big-points skill.
"If I cut words I'll lose my meaning."	You cut deadwood (filler, redundancy, empty intensifiers), not ideas. The meaning lives in the strong words you keep. Cut a quarter and check — it's still all there.
Thinks longer/fancier = better.	Inflated phrasing slows a reader down; it doesn't impress one. Concision is strength. Strong, specific words beat big vague ones.
Thinks passive voice is wrong.	Passive is correct grammar and a tool — right when the doer is unknown, irrelevant, or rightly de-emphasized. Accidental passive that hides who acted is the problem; choose voice on purpose.
Tries to revise structure and edit sentences at once.	Two different jobs for different attention. Big pass first, small pass second. Reverse-outline for structure; then sentences.
Variety = makes every sentence long and complex.	Variety means mixing short and long and varying openings. A short sentence after two long ones is a power move. Don't trade choppy for monotonous.
Buries the key idea in the middle of the sentence.	Readers remember the end. Put the important idea in the emphatic position (last) and in the main clause, not a subordinate one.
Pastes a chatbot's "tightened" paragraph as their own.	It flattens your voice into boilerplate and can change your meaning while "tightening." Use AI to flag wordiness; you make the cut. Protect your voice and your claim.

Scope flag

This outline covers Objective 7's revision-and-style half: global revision vs. local editing, concision, sentence variety, emphasis/end-weight, active vs. passive voice, and voice/style (clarity over fanciness). It callbacks the Week-1 revision-vs-editing distinction and now deepens it. The grammar/mechanics editing half of Objective 7 — fragments, comma splices, run-ons, agreement, and punctuation — is Week 14 and is only previewed here (the tease). All worked and practice sentences in this outline are the instructor's own illustrative examples, attributed to no one — the safest path, with zero fabrication risk; the linked Purdue OWL (concision, sentence variety, active/passive) and Excelsior OWL (revising/editing) pages are reference reading, not reproduced. The before/after pairs were checked so that each "before" genuinely contains the named flaw and each "after" preserves the meaning while fixing it. No real author is quoted; no source or citation is invented.

~ Prof. Lindgren's edition · Fall 2026 · built with thecoursemaker.com