essay revision lesson

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8.4 Revising and Editing

Learning objectives.

• Identify major areas of concern in the draft essay during revising and editing.
• Use peer reviews and editing checklists to assist revising and editing.
• Revise and edit the first draft of your essay and produce a final draft.

Revising and editing are the two tasks you undertake to significantly improve your essay. Both are very important elements of the writing process. You may think that a completed first draft means little improvement is needed. However, even experienced writers need to improve their drafts and rely on peers during revising and editing. You may know that athletes miss catches, fumble balls, or overshoot goals. Dancers forget steps, turn too slowly, or miss beats. For both athletes and dancers, the more they practice, the stronger their performance will become. Web designers seek better images, a more clever design, or a more appealing background for their web pages. Writing has the same capacity to profit from improvement and revision.

Understanding the Purpose of Revising and Editing

Revising and editing allow you to examine two important aspects of your writing separately, so that you can give each task your undivided attention.

• When you revise , you take a second look at your ideas. You might add, cut, move, or change information in order to make your ideas clearer, more accurate, more interesting, or more convincing.
• When you edit , you take a second look at how you expressed your ideas. You add or change words. You fix any problems in grammar, punctuation, and sentence structure. You improve your writing style. You make your essay into a polished, mature piece of writing, the end product of your best efforts.

How do you get the best out of your revisions and editing? Here are some strategies that writers have developed to look at their first drafts from a fresh perspective. Try them over the course of this semester; then keep using the ones that bring results.

• Take a break. You are proud of what you wrote, but you might be too close to it to make changes. Set aside your writing for a few hours or even a day until you can look at it objectively.
• Ask someone you trust for feedback and constructive criticism.
• Pretend you are one of your readers. Are you satisfied or dissatisfied? Why?
• Use the resources that your college provides. Find out where your school’s writing lab is located and ask about the assistance they provide online and in person.

Many people hear the words critic , critical , and criticism and pick up only negative vibes that provoke feelings that make them blush, grumble, or shout. However, as a writer and a thinker, you need to learn to be critical of yourself in a positive way and have high expectations for your work. You also need to train your eye and trust your ability to fix what needs fixing. For this, you need to teach yourself where to look.

Creating Unity and Coherence

Following your outline closely offers you a reasonable guarantee that your writing will stay on purpose and not drift away from the controlling idea. However, when writers are rushed, are tired, or cannot find the right words, their writing may become less than they want it to be. Their writing may no longer be clear and concise, and they may be adding information that is not needed to develop the main idea.

When a piece of writing has unity , all the ideas in each paragraph and in the entire essay clearly belong and are arranged in an order that makes logical sense. When the writing has coherence , the ideas flow smoothly. The wording clearly indicates how one idea leads to another within a paragraph and from paragraph to paragraph.

Reading your writing aloud will often help you find problems with unity and coherence. Listen for the clarity and flow of your ideas. Identify places where you find yourself confused, and write a note to yourself about possible fixes.

Creating Unity

Sometimes writers get caught up in the moment and cannot resist a good digression. Even though you might enjoy such detours when you chat with friends, unplanned digressions usually harm a piece of writing.

Mariah stayed close to her outline when she drafted the three body paragraphs of her essay she tentatively titled “Digital Technology: The Newest and the Best at What Price?” But a recent shopping trip for an HDTV upset her enough that she digressed from the main topic of her third paragraph and included comments about the sales staff at the electronics store she visited. When she revised her essay, she deleted the off-topic sentences that affected the unity of the paragraph.

Read the following paragraph twice, the first time without Mariah’s changes, and the second time with them.

Nothing is more confusing to me than choosing among televisions. It confuses lots of people who want a new high-definition digital television (HDTV) with a large screen to watch sports and DVDs on. You could listen to the guys in the electronics store, but word has it they know little more than you do. They want to sell what they have in stock, not what best fits your needs. You face decisions you never had to make with the old, bulky picture-tube televisions. Screen resolution means the number of horizontal scan lines the screen can show. This resolution is often 1080p, or full HD, or 768p. The trouble is that if you have a smaller screen, 32 inches or 37 inches diagonal, you won’t be able to tell the difference with the naked eye. The 1080p televisions cost more, though, so those are what the salespeople want you to buy. They get bigger commissions. The other important decision you face as you walk around the sales floor is whether to get a plasma screen or an LCD screen. Now here the salespeople may finally give you decent info. Plasma flat-panel television screens can be much larger in diameter than their LCD rivals. Plasma screens show truer blacks and can be viewed at a wider angle than current LCD screens. But be careful and tell the salesperson you have budget constraints. Large flat-panel plasma screens are much more expensive than flat-screen LCD models. Don’t let someone make you by more television than you need!

Answer the following two questions about Mariah’s paragraph:

Collaboration

Please share with a classmate and compare your answers.

• Now start to revise the first draft of the essay you wrote in Section 8 “Writing Your Own First Draft” . Reread it to find any statements that affect the unity of your writing. Decide how best to revise.

When you reread your writing to find revisions to make, look for each type of problem in a separate sweep. Read it straight through once to locate any problems with unity. Read it straight through a second time to find problems with coherence. You may follow this same practice during many stages of the writing process.

Writing at Work

Many companies hire copyeditors and proofreaders to help them produce the cleanest possible final drafts of large writing projects. Copyeditors are responsible for suggesting revisions and style changes; proofreaders check documents for any errors in capitalization, spelling, and punctuation that have crept in. Many times, these tasks are done on a freelance basis, with one freelancer working for a variety of clients.

Creating Coherence

Careful writers use transitions to clarify how the ideas in their sentences and paragraphs are related. These words and phrases help the writing flow smoothly. Adding transitions is not the only way to improve coherence, but they are often useful and give a mature feel to your essays. Table 8.3 “Common Transitional Words and Phrases” groups many common transitions according to their purpose.

Table 8.3 Common Transitional Words and Phrases

After Maria revised for unity, she next examined her paragraph about televisions to check for coherence. She looked for places where she needed to add a transition or perhaps reword the text to make the flow of ideas clear. In the version that follows, she has already deleted the sentences that were off topic.

Many writers make their revisions on a printed copy and then transfer them to the version on-screen. They conventionally use a small arrow called a caret (^) to show where to insert an addition or correction.

1. Answer the following questions about Mariah’s revised paragraph.

2. Now return to the first draft of the essay you wrote in Section 8 “Writing Your Own First Draft” and revise it for coherence. Add transition words and phrases where they are needed, and make any other changes that are needed to improve the flow and connection between ideas.

Being Clear and Concise

Some writers are very methodical and painstaking when they write a first draft. Other writers unleash a lot of words in order to get out all that they feel they need to say. Do either of these composing styles match your style? Or is your composing style somewhere in between? No matter which description best fits you, the first draft of almost every piece of writing, no matter its author, can be made clearer and more concise.

If you have a tendency to write too much, you will need to look for unnecessary words. If you have a tendency to be vague or imprecise in your wording, you will need to find specific words to replace any overly general language.

Identifying Wordiness

Sometimes writers use too many words when fewer words will appeal more to their audience and better fit their purpose. Here are some common examples of wordiness to look for in your draft. Eliminating wordiness helps all readers, because it makes your ideas clear, direct, and straightforward.

Sentences that begin with There is or There are .

Wordy: There are two major experiments that the Biology Department sponsors.

Revised: The Biology Department sponsors two major experiments.

Sentences with unnecessary modifiers.

Wordy: Two extremely famous and well-known consumer advocates spoke eloquently in favor of the proposed important legislation.

Revised: Two well-known consumer advocates spoke in favor of the proposed legislation.

Sentences with deadwood phrases that add little to the meaning. Be judicious when you use phrases such as in terms of , with a mind to , on the subject of , as to whether or not , more or less , as far as…is concerned , and similar expressions. You can usually find a more straightforward way to state your point.

Wordy: As a world leader in the field of green technology, the company plans to focus its efforts in the area of geothermal energy.

A report as to whether or not to use geysers as an energy source is in the process of preparation.

Revised: As a world leader in green technology, the company plans to focus on geothermal energy.

A report about using geysers as an energy source is in preparation.

Sentences in the passive voice or with forms of the verb to be . Sentences with passive-voice verbs often create confusion, because the subject of the sentence does not perform an action. Sentences are clearer when the subject of the sentence performs the action and is followed by a strong verb. Use strong active-voice verbs in place of forms of to be , which can lead to wordiness. Avoid passive voice when you can.

Wordy: It might perhaps be said that using a GPS device is something that is a benefit to drivers who have a poor sense of direction.

Revised: Using a GPS device benefits drivers who have a poor sense of direction.

Sentences with constructions that can be shortened.

Wordy: The e-book reader, which is a recent invention, may become as commonplace as the cell phone.

My over-sixty uncle bought an e-book reader, and his wife bought an e-book reader, too.

Revised: The e-book reader, a recent invention, may become as commonplace as the cell phone.

My over-sixty uncle and his wife both bought e-book readers.

Now return once more to the first draft of the essay you have been revising. Check it for unnecessary words. Try making your sentences as concise as they can be.

Choosing Specific, Appropriate Words

Most college essays should be written in formal English suitable for an academic situation. Follow these principles to be sure that your word choice is appropriate. For more information about word choice, see Chapter 4 “Working with Words: Which Word Is Right?” .

• Avoid slang. Find alternatives to bummer , kewl , and rad .
• Avoid language that is overly casual. Write about “men and women” rather than “girls and guys” unless you are trying to create a specific effect. A formal tone calls for formal language.
• Avoid contractions. Use do not in place of don’t , I am in place of I’m , have not in place of haven’t , and so on. Contractions are considered casual speech.
• Avoid clichés. Overused expressions such as green with envy , face the music , better late than never , and similar expressions are empty of meaning and may not appeal to your audience.
• Be careful when you use words that sound alike but have different meanings. Some examples are allusion/illusion , complement/compliment , council/counsel , concurrent/consecutive , founder/flounder , and historic/historical . When in doubt, check a dictionary.
• Choose words with the connotations you want. Choosing a word for its connotations is as important in formal essay writing as it is in all kinds of writing. Compare the positive connotations of the word proud and the negative connotations of arrogant and conceited .
• Use specific words rather than overly general words. Find synonyms for thing , people , nice , good , bad , interesting , and other vague words. Or use specific details to make your exact meaning clear.

Now read the revisions Mariah made to make her third paragraph clearer and more concise. She has already incorporated the changes she made to improve unity and coherence.

1. Answer the following questions about Mariah’s revised paragraph:

2. Now return once more to your essay in progress. Read carefully for problems with word choice. Be sure that your draft is written in formal language and that your word choice is specific and appropriate.

Completing a Peer Review

After working so closely with a piece of writing, writers often need to step back and ask for a more objective reader. What writers most need is feedback from readers who can respond only to the words on the page. When they are ready, writers show their drafts to someone they respect and who can give an honest response about its strengths and weaknesses.

You, too, can ask a peer to read your draft when it is ready. After evaluating the feedback and assessing what is most helpful, the reader’s feedback will help you when you revise your draft. This process is called peer review .

You can work with a partner in your class and identify specific ways to strengthen each other’s essays. Although you may be uncomfortable sharing your writing at first, remember that each writer is working toward the same goal: a final draft that fits the audience and the purpose. Maintaining a positive attitude when providing feedback will put you and your partner at ease. The box that follows provides a useful framework for the peer review session.

Questions for Peer Review

Title of essay: ____________________________________________

Date: ____________________________________________

Writer’s name: ____________________________________________

Peer reviewer’s name: _________________________________________

• This essay is about____________________________________________.
• Your main points in this essay are____________________________________________.
• What I most liked about this essay is____________________________________________.

These three points struck me as your strongest:

These places in your essay are not clear to me:

a. Where: ____________________________________________

Needs improvement because__________________________________________

b. Where: ____________________________________________

Needs improvement because ____________________________________________

c. Where: ____________________________________________

The one additional change you could make that would improve this essay significantly is ____________________________________________.

One of the reasons why word-processing programs build in a reviewing feature is that workgroups have become a common feature in many businesses. Writing is often collaborative, and the members of a workgroup and their supervisors often critique group members’ work and offer feedback that will lead to a better final product.

Exchange essays with a classmate and complete a peer review of each other’s draft in progress. Remember to give positive feedback and to be courteous and polite in your responses. Focus on providing one positive comment and one question for more information to the author.

Using Feedback Objectively

The purpose of peer feedback is to receive constructive criticism of your essay. Your peer reviewer is your first real audience, and you have the opportunity to learn what confuses and delights a reader so that you can improve your work before sharing the final draft with a wider audience (or your intended audience).

It may not be necessary to incorporate every recommendation your peer reviewer makes. However, if you start to observe a pattern in the responses you receive from peer reviewers, you might want to take that feedback into consideration in future assignments. For example, if you read consistent comments about a need for more research, then you may want to consider including more research in future assignments.

Using Feedback from Multiple Sources

You might get feedback from more than one reader as you share different stages of your revised draft. In this situation, you may receive feedback from readers who do not understand the assignment or who lack your involvement with and enthusiasm for it.

You need to evaluate the responses you receive according to two important criteria:

• Determine if the feedback supports the purpose of the assignment.
• Determine if the suggested revisions are appropriate to the audience.

Then, using these standards, accept or reject revision feedback.

Work with two partners. Go back to Note 8.81 “Exercise 4” in this lesson and compare your responses to Activity A, about Mariah’s paragraph, with your partners’. Recall Mariah’s purpose for writing and her audience. Then, working individually, list where you agree and where you disagree about revision needs.

Editing Your Draft

If you have been incorporating each set of revisions as Mariah has, you have produced multiple drafts of your writing. So far, all your changes have been content changes. Perhaps with the help of peer feedback, you have made sure that you sufficiently supported your ideas. You have checked for problems with unity and coherence. You have examined your essay for word choice, revising to cut unnecessary words and to replace weak wording with specific and appropriate wording.

The next step after revising the content is editing. When you edit, you examine the surface features of your text. You examine your spelling, grammar, usage, and punctuation. You also make sure you use the proper format when creating your finished assignment.

Editing often takes time. Budgeting time into the writing process allows you to complete additional edits after revising. Editing and proofreading your writing helps you create a finished work that represents your best efforts. Here are a few more tips to remember about your readers:

• Readers do not notice correct spelling, but they do notice misspellings.
• Readers look past your sentences to get to your ideas—unless the sentences are awkward, poorly constructed, and frustrating to read.
• Readers notice when every sentence has the same rhythm as every other sentence, with no variety.
• Readers do not cheer when you use there , their , and they’re correctly, but they notice when you do not.
• Readers will notice the care with which you handled your assignment and your attention to detail in the delivery of an error-free document..

The first section of this book offers a useful review of grammar, mechanics, and usage. Use it to help you eliminate major errors in your writing and refine your understanding of the conventions of language. Do not hesitate to ask for help, too, from peer tutors in your academic department or in the college’s writing lab. In the meantime, use the checklist to help you edit your writing.

Editing Your Writing

• Are some sentences actually sentence fragments?
• Are some sentences run-on sentences? How can I correct them?
• Do some sentences need conjunctions between independent clauses?
• Does every verb agree with its subject?
• Is every verb in the correct tense?
• Are tense forms, especially for irregular verbs, written correctly?
• Have I used subject, object, and possessive personal pronouns correctly?
• Have I used who and whom correctly?
• Is the antecedent of every pronoun clear?
• Do all personal pronouns agree with their antecedents?
• Have I used the correct comparative and superlative forms of adjectives and adverbs?
• Is it clear which word a participial phrase modifies, or is it a dangling modifier?

Sentence Structure

• Are all my sentences simple sentences, or do I vary my sentence structure?
• Have I chosen the best coordinating or subordinating conjunctions to join clauses?
• Have I created long, overpacked sentences that should be shortened for clarity?
• Do I see any mistakes in parallel structure?

Punctuation

• Does every sentence end with the correct end punctuation?
• Can I justify the use of every exclamation point?
• Have I used apostrophes correctly to write all singular and plural possessive forms?
• Have I used quotation marks correctly?

Mechanics and Usage

• Can I find any spelling errors? How can I correct them?
• Have I used capital letters where they are needed?
• Have I written abbreviations, where allowed, correctly?
• Can I find any errors in the use of commonly confused words, such as to / too / two ?

Be careful about relying too much on spelling checkers and grammar checkers. A spelling checker cannot recognize that you meant to write principle but wrote principal instead. A grammar checker often queries constructions that are perfectly correct. The program does not understand your meaning; it makes its check against a general set of formulas that might not apply in each instance. If you use a grammar checker, accept the suggestions that make sense, but consider why the suggestions came up.

Proofreading requires patience; it is very easy to read past a mistake. Set your paper aside for at least a few hours, if not a day or more, so your mind will rest. Some professional proofreaders read a text backward so they can concentrate on spelling and punctuation. Another helpful technique is to slowly read a paper aloud, paying attention to every word, letter, and punctuation mark.

If you need additional proofreading help, ask a reliable friend, a classmate, or a peer tutor to make a final pass on your paper to look for anything you missed.

Remember to use proper format when creating your finished assignment. Sometimes an instructor, a department, or a college will require students to follow specific instructions on titles, margins, page numbers, or the location of the writer’s name. These requirements may be more detailed and rigid for research projects and term papers, which often observe the American Psychological Association (APA) or Modern Language Association (MLA) style guides, especially when citations of sources are included.

To ensure the format is correct and follows any specific instructions, make a final check before you submit an assignment.

With the help of the checklist, edit and proofread your essay.

Key Takeaways

• Revising and editing are the stages of the writing process in which you improve your work before producing a final draft.
• During revising, you add, cut, move, or change information in order to improve content.
• During editing, you take a second look at the words and sentences you used to express your ideas and fix any problems in grammar, punctuation, and sentence structure.
• Unity in writing means that all the ideas in each paragraph and in the entire essay clearly belong together and are arranged in an order that makes logical sense.
• Coherence in writing means that the writer’s wording clearly indicates how one idea leads to another within a paragraph and between paragraphs.
• Transitional words and phrases effectively make writing more coherent.
• Writing should be clear and concise, with no unnecessary words.
• Effective formal writing uses specific, appropriate words and avoids slang, contractions, clichés, and overly general words.
• Peer reviews, done properly, can give writers objective feedback about their writing. It is the writer’s responsibility to evaluate the results of peer reviews and incorporate only useful feedback.
• Remember to budget time for careful editing and proofreading. Use all available resources, including editing checklists, peer editing, and your institution’s writing lab, to improve your editing skills.

Writing for Success Copyright © 2015 by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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• Revision Strategies
• Time Management
• Reading Aloud
• Asking Questions
• Revising on Paper
• Summarizing

1. Revision Strategies

Revision is a process of re-visioning (i.e., looking at again) and rethinking a written work. During revision, writers reassess the structure, ideas, and support of their work. There are several ways to revise, all of which involve keeping the "big picture" of the writing project in mind. Some strategies work better for some writers than others, but all writers must remain open to new techniques. Revision strategies can be especially helpful to beginning writers, writers working in a new genre, and those who are experiencing writer's block.

As you work through the writing process, you'll learn which of these strategies work best for you. Approach each strategy with an open mind. All of them can help you to improve a draft, and to overcome writer's block.

2. Time Management

The first strategy is simple: give yourself enough time between drafts (or deadlines) to revise. You'll see your work more clearly — the good and the bad — when you're not rushed. A day or two of revision is ideal, but even a few hours away from your project will enable you to see your work as readers will see it. This is a valuable perspective to have when optimizing your draft.

3. Reading Aloud

You can also distance yourself from your work by reading it out loud. Writers sometimes overlook mistakes and problem areas when reading silently. It's probably safe to say that everyone is more experienced as a listener than as a reader. Take advantage of your ears' experience with language to identify words, sentences and paragraphs that don't flow as well as they could, or should.

4. Asking Questions

Another effective revision strategy is to ask questions about the draft. For example, it can be helpful to ask "Do I still agree with my thesis?" It's not uncommon for a writer's opinion to change during the writing process. One of the worst mistakes a writer can make is to argue for something that he or she no longer believes.

You can also ask yourself whether you've provided enough support for your thesis. Should you change your thesis to better align it with supporting information or vice versa? You should also ask questions about the rest of your work, including the broad requirements and purposes of the writing project. Following are examples of good revision questions:

• Have I fulfilled the requirements of the assignment on a conceptual level, or only on a technical level (e.g., page length, format and layout, etc.)?
• Are the tone, voice, and syntax used in my draft appropriate for the assignment?
• How will my audience react to this work, and what can (or should) I do to shape their response?
• Have I ignored counterarguments that should be addressed?

5. Revising on Paper

Many experienced writers revise their drafts, especially later drafts, using paper copies. Like reading out loud, revising on paper sometimes enables you to view your work from a different perspective, and from a critical distance. You might see the "big picture" better on paper than you did on the screen.

Paper copies can enable you to understand how ideas, proposals and positions you've included in your draft do (or do not) fit together. It's also easier for most writers to jot down ideas, notes, and comments on a piece of paper than with a word processing application. The use of paper copies enables writers (especially beginning writers) to separate the revision and drafting steps of the writing process.

6. Summarizing

You can often discover weaknesses in your arguments by rewriting (or verbally stating) the main ideas of your essay. By writing out your ideas, or telling them to another person, you may find a different way to phrase your thesis, for example. You may also notice small things (important small things) that you would not have detected otherwise.

hint This strategy is particularly effective when it is combined with the techniques described previously (or any effective technique you may discover on your own.)

• giving yourself time between drafts to revise
• reading drafts out loud
• asking questions of your theses and assignments
• revising on paper
• summarizing your main points and ideas

Source: Adapted from Sophia Instructor Gavin McCall

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• College essay

How to Revise Your College Admissions Essay | Examples

Published on September 24, 2021 by Kirsten Courault . Revised on December 8, 2023.

Revision and editing are essential to make your college essay the best it can be.

When you’ve finished your draft, first focus on big-picture issues like the overall narrative and clarity of your essay. Then, check your style and tone . You can do this for free with a paraphrasing tool . Finally, when you’re happy with your essay, polish up the details of grammar and punctuation with the essay checker , and don’t forget to check that it’s within the word count limit .

Remember to take a break after you finish writing and after each stage of revision. You should go through several rounds of revisions and ask for feedback on your drafts from a teacher, friend or family member, or professional essay coach. If you don’t have much time , focus on clarity and grammar by using a grammar checker .

You can also check out our college essay examples to get an idea of how to turn a weak essay into a strong one.

Table of contents

Big picture: check for overall message, flow, and clarity, voice: check for style and tone, details: check for grammar and punctuation, feedback: get a second opinion, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about college application essays.

In your first reading, don’t touch grammatical errors; just read through the entire essay to check the overall message, flow, and content quality.

Check your overall message

After reading your essay, answer the following questions:

• What message do I take away from my essay?
• Did I answer the prompt?
• Does it end with an insight, or does it just tell a story?
• Do I use stories and examples to demonstrate my values? Do these values match the university’s values?
• Is it focused on me, or is it too focused on another person or idea?

If you answer any of these questions negatively, rewrite your essay to fix these problems.

Check transitions and flow

Underline every paragraph’s topic and transition sentence to visualize whether a clear structure and natural flow are maintained throughout your essay. If necessary, rewrite or rearrange these topic and transition sentences to create a logical outline. Then, reread the entire essay to check it flows naturally.

Also check that your application essay’s introduction catches the reader’s attention and that you end the essay with an effective payoff that builds on what comes before.

Check for content quality

Highlight any parts that are unclear, boring, or unnecessary. Afterward, go back and clarify the unclear sections, embellish the boring parts with vivid language to help your essay stand out , and delete any unnecessary sentences or words.

Make sure everything in the essay is showing off what colleges are looking for : your personality, interests, and positive traits.

Prevent plagiarism. Run a free check.

To ensure you use the correct tone for your essay, check whether there’s vulnerability, authenticity, a positive and polite tone, and a balance between casual and formal. Ask yourself the following questions:

• Does the essay sound like me? Do my word choices seem natural?
• Is it vulnerable? Do I write about myself in a way that demonstrates genuine self-reflection?
• Is the tone conversational but respectful?
• Is it polite and respectful about sensitive topics?

Read it aloud to catch errors

Hearing your essay read aloud can help you to catch problems with style and voice that you might miss when reading it silently. For example, you may overuse certain words, have unparallel sentence structures , or use vocabulary that sounds unnatural.

You should read your essay aloud several times throughout the revision process. This can also help you find grammar and punctuation errors. You can try the following:

• Read it aloud yourself.
• Have someone read it aloud for you.
• Put it into a text-to-speech program.
• Record yourself and play it back.

After checking for big-picture and stylistic issues, read your essay again for grammar and punctuation errors.

Run spell check

First, run spell check in your word processor to find any obvious spelling, grammar, or punctuation mistakes.

Punctuation, capitalization, and verb errors

Spell check might miss some minor errors in punctuation and capitalization . With verbs , check for correct subject-verb agreement and verb tense .

Sentence structure

Check for common sentence structure mistakes such as sentence fragments and run-ons. Throughout your essay, ensure you vary your sentence lengths and structures for an interesting flow.

Check for parallel structure in more complex sentences. Maintain clarity by fixing any dangling or misplaced modifiers .

Consistency

Be consistent with your use of contractions, acronyms, and verb tenses.

Whenever you reuse an essay for another university, make sure you replace any names from or references to the previous university.

You should get feedback on your essay before you submit your application. Stick to around two to three readers to avoid too much conflicting advice.

Ask for feedback from people who know you well, such as teachers or family members. It’s also important to get feedback on the content, tone, and flow of your essay from someone who is familiar with the college admissions process and has strong language skills.

You might want to consider getting professional help from an essay coach or editor. Editors should only give advice and suggestions; they should never rewrite your essay for you.

Have your readers or editors answer these feedback questions:

• Is the introduction catchy and memorable?
• Do I include specific stories that demonstrate my values?
• Are there smooth transitions between paragraphs?
• What message did you take away from my essay?
• What parts were unclear, boring, or unnecessary?
• Does the essay sound like me?
• Is it vulnerable? Does it demonstrate genuine self-reflection?
• Does it have the appropriate tone?
• Is my humor (if any) funny?

Everyone needs feedback—asking for help doesn’t mean you’re a bad writer. A fresh pair of eyes might notice things you have missed.

Get help from a teacher, guidance counselor, or mentor

You can ask for feedback from a teacher who is familiar with your writing, preferably your English teacher , who can help you with narrative, flow, and grammar:

• Familiar with your writing
• Has good knowledge of narrative essays, grammar, and style techniques
• May be overwhelmed with other students asking for help
• May not be familiar with the college essay writing style

You can also ask your school’s guidance counselor , who should have specialist knowledge of what admissions officers look for in a college admissions essay:

• Has good knowledge of the college application process
• Most likely overwhelmed with other students asking for help
• May not be familiar with your writing or personal background

Ask your teacher or guidance counselor for help at least one to two months before the submission deadline, as many other students will also want their help. Give them at least three weeks to review your essay.

You can also ask another adult, such as a mentor or coach who supervises your extracurricular activities:

• Knows your background well
• Might not be a strong writer

Ask family or friends to check for authenticity

Family and friends can be a good resource for checking that your essay sounds like you. However, for more comprehensive feedback, seek help from family with a strong writing or English educational background. You can also ask older siblings or cousins who have successfully completed the college admissions process.

• Familiar with your background, personality, and key life moments
• Can help you identify whether your essay has authenticity and vulnerability
• May be unqualified to edit your essay
• May give subjective advice to avoid hurting your feelings
• May be difficult for you to receive unfavorable feedback from someone close to you

Hire an essay coach or editor

After receiving feedback from your close network, you can also get help from an essay editor who can give you objective expert feedback.

• Has specialized knowledge of college admissions essays
• Can give objective, high-quality feedback on your content, tone, and grammar
• Unfamiliar with your background and personality

Explore our essay editing service

Incorporate feedback after a break

After receiving feedback, take a break for a few hours or get a good night’s sleep. Then, come back refreshed to incorporate feedback.

Depending on your writing, you may undergo multiple rounds of revision. Save each draft of your essay in a separate document, in case you want to borrow phrases or ideas from a previous draft.

If you want to know more about academic writing , effective communication , or parts of speech , make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples.

Academic writing

• Writing process
• Transition words
• Passive voice
• Paraphrasing

 Communication

• How to end an email
• Ms, mrs, miss
• How to start an email
• I hope this email finds you well
• Hope you are doing well

 Parts of speech

• Personal pronouns
• Conjunctions

When revising your college essay , first check for big-picture issues regarding message, flow, tone, style , and clarity. Then, focus on eliminating grammar and punctuation errors.

Teachers and guidance counselors can help you check your language, tone, and content . Ask for their help at least one to two months before the submission deadline, as many other students will also want their help.

Friends and family are a good resource to check for authenticity. It’s best to seek help from family members with a strong writing or English educational background, or from older siblings and cousins who have been through the college admissions process.

If possible, get help from an essay coach or editor ; they’ll have specialized knowledge of college admissions essays and be able to give objective expert feedback.

Depending on your writing, you may go through several rounds of revision . Make sure to put aside your essay for a little while after each editing stage to return with a fresh perspective.

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4 Strategies for Teaching Students How to Revise

During revision, students should work closely together, discuss models, add details, delete the unnecessary, and rearrange for clarity and effect.

I’m a fan of the writing workshop. That means I also write with my students, and I allow plenty of time for students to conference with me and with each other. I also provide models of what good writing looks like—and lots of them.

Here’s what the classroom writing process looks like:

• Brainstorming (Think About It)
• Drafting (Getting It Down)
• Revising (Making It Better)
• Editing (Making It Right)
• Publishing (Sharing It)

At the beginning of the writing process, I have had students write silently. For it to be successful, in my experience, students need plenty of topics handy (self-generated, or a list of topics, questions, and prompts provided). Silent writing is a wonderful, focused activity for the brainstorming and drafting stage of the writing process. I also think it's important that the teacher write during this time, as well (model, model, model) .

However, when it comes to revising, and later editing, I think peer interaction is necessary. Students need to, for example, “rehearse” words, phrases, introductions, and thesis statements with each other during the revision stage.

Strategy 1: Providing Models

This is the number one strategy for a reason. Whatever we want kids to do in their writing, we have to provide models for them. Want them to create zippy titles for that essay? Show them zippy titles, and talk about ways they can forage for title ideas from within their paragraphs. For example, it could be a few words that hint or foreshadow at what’s to come in a narrative, or for that literary analysis paper, it could be one word that describes the mood of a character or of the story.

During revision time, I like to use anonymous student papers from other class periods (or past years) on the document camera with the whole class—one that has similar clunkiness or vague generalities I see in current papers of students (e.g., repetition, lack of descriptive or supportive sentences, or lack of complex sentence structures).

We revise the example together. Students will share out things to add, delete, and rearrange. As they share, the teacher can make those changes. This is powerful stuff, and always confirms for me that the writing process needs to be a social act.

So how do students know what to add, delete, or rearrange? Again, using models (those that are exemplary and those that need some repair) helps young writers see and learn what good writing looks like.

Strategy 2: Adding Details

Encourage your students to add details to their narrative writing. For example, students can insert imagery, emotions, dialogue, and voice. In a narrative essay, present them with a sentence like “She was so tired,” and have them re-create it using imagery: “Her eyelids drooped as she dragged her tired feet behind her.” Show some models of dialogue, and ask students to find in their own narrations where they explain. Might adding dialogue brighten the story? Tell them to try it.

For nonfiction, expository writing, students can insert facts, statistics, examples, and quotes from experts. Use a student essay example where there is a claim made without any evidence to follow: “Most people don’t think Trump would make a good president.” Talk about the different kinds of evidence they can use to support the claim and then have them search for evidence: “According to a poll given to U.S. voters in January 2016, only one out of 15 Americans would vote for Trump.”

Students should do this together with the same example or model and find a variety of types of evidence to back the claim (a statistic, a quote from a politician, etc.). This collectively demonstrates to them how to do this, allows them to practice together, and provides an opportunity for them to teach each other.

Strategy 3: Deleting the Unnecessary

Provide students with a narrative or expository essay where there is some redundancy of a topic or repetition of words. As a group, decide to combine ideas that are redundant or remove one altogether. For repetitive words, ask students to look through the thesaurus and choose synonyms to consider. Nice is a word students may use repetitively. They delete the three extra uses of it and replace those with pleasant , kind , caring .

Show students another essay, or two or three, where the writer goes off topic. Ask them to find similar places in their own writing and make note to remove or rewrite those sections.

Strategy 4: Rearranging for Clarity and Effect

In that argumentative essay or short story, maybe the ending is a better beginning? Show students text examples where the writer begins with the end or the middle of the story (for narrative), or, for argumentative, where a writer begins with the devastating results of a policy or environmental disaster, then moves to persuade readers in the rest of the essay.

Would the narrative story be better if written chronologically? Or should the claims and evidence follow in an order related to the most important point, or should you save the best point and evidence until the end?

Show your students models of different ways to organize narrative, informational, and argumentative essays. You may even wish to provide scissors and ask them to cut up a draft and mix around the order to see how it reads.

Honoring the Revision Stage

We teachers sometimes combine revising and editing—and this confuses our students. Revision is making it better, and editing is making it correct. Sure, some editing (cleaning up grammar and conventions) might occur during the revision stage, and that’s great. But as my colleague Jane Hancock says, the revision stage is about tightening, brightening, and sharpening the writing.

Writing Revision Lessons

“There is no such thing as a well written essay, only a well   REWRITEN (REVISED)   essay!”

Revision   IS NOT   correcting spelling and punctuation.

Revision IS making an essay stronger, more impactful, clearer and more concise by incorporating specific wri ting conventions and proper grammar.

Revisions achieve clarity, correctness,   conciseness   and variety in sentence structure which   is   the criteria of   for   essays o n the NJSLA, SAT,   ACT,   and college entrance exams. They show how to achieve appositives, parallel structure,   verbals   and verbal phrases.  

In each lesson, students immediately apply learned revision skills to provided grade-level student essays by following specific directi ons   for each sentence.

The lessons demonstrate how to complete a series of Revision Laps, a critical skill for improving an essay.  Each lesson focuses on a different skill.

Easy for the teacher to implement in the classroom, every lesson includes a step-by-step lesson plan, all materials, assessments,   and   answer keys .

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The English Department

• College Composition

Revising Drafts

Developing source dialogue—revising researched writing, make it interesting/make me want to read it: catchy openings, out from under the rug: radical revision, play it again, sam: analysis vs. summary, proofreading pitfalls handout for self-editing, raising the stakes: adding tension and intensity to a story, stylistic revision: maximizing clarity and directness, the wet beagle: show me, don't tell me workshop, titles (say so much), what is it enriching descriptive writing.

Purpose:  This exercise focuses on research article revision.

Description:  This revision exercise helps students identify source-heavy writing and work towards viewing source material as a "person" with whom they carry on a conversation. You'll want to have an excerpt, short essay, or film clip ready for Part 2. Choose one with an overtly opinionated bent/bias that is sure to elicit a response. For a video clip, something like Michael Moore's interview with Marilyn Manson would work.

Suggested Time:  35 minutes to full class period

• Ask students to bring two different-colored highlighters to class with their drafts. They’ll likely be in the later stages of drafting the research article, using a lot of source material.
• Talk about tone and narrative voice (probably a topic you dealt with at the beginning of drafting). Can they easily identify different "voices" in writing? More importantly, can they identify the voice of a source over their own?

Now, have them take out the first highlighter color and find all the sentences on at least the first two or three pages that contain source material and highlight the from-source portions. Even if they have paraphrased the source, highlight it. 

They’ll probably start to notice their pages turning pink, orange, yellow, or green – depending on the color of the highlighter! This is an indication that there’s too much source and not enough author-source dialogue. Explain that there should be no more than 20 percent strict source material in any article – the author’s voice and focus should always predominate. 

• Now, take out highlighter color two. Ask them to go through and mark those passages containing strictly author opinion, viewpoint, unique ideas, or thoughts. Most students will find this color a bit underused, but others will notice too much highlighter here if their source material was seriously lacking.
• Take a moment to diagnose the different problems these papers may be suffering from. Too much color one means source overload. Too much color two means empty opinion and guesswork. A comfortable balance means they’re probably doing well – but they can still benefit from developing smooth narrator-source dialogue.
• Tell students that you’re going to play the part of a talking source by reading your chosen excerpt allowed (or playing your video clip). Read or play the sample, statement-by-statement, pausing at each point to allow students to write their honest, opinionated, conversational response to what the "source" has just said. They should pretend that they’re talking face-to-face with the author or speaker replying naturally and intelligently.
• Once you feel you’ve got sufficient conversation/dialogue generated on paper, ask a few students to read their replies as you reread the "source" (like a script), creating an actual conversation. Discuss handling sources as if in dialogue with them. Have students try this with highlighted source sections of their drafts.

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Purpose:  This exercise works to develop strong first sentences and unique voices in student writing. 

Description:  This is a voice activity demonstrating the fact that many student pieces could use more “personality” and that many of them sound exactly alike. This exercise is an attempt to help students enliven writing. This would work well with an early draft of a personal narrative or short story, but could be easily adopted for a research assignment.

Suggested Time:  30-40 minutes

Procedure: 

1. Pull first sentences from some of your students’ papers and first sentences from published sources and mix them up. None of them are identified. 

2. Put them on the overhead and the students rank the sentences from most interesting to least interesting. Usually, their sentences are at the bottom of the list, and often, many of the writers do not recognize their own sentences.

3. After pointing out which sentences originated where, we then discuss why they ranked the high sentences as high as they did. We discuss voice and how the writers seem to get right into what they are writing about.

4. Then challenge students to rewrite opening sentences 3 or 4 different ways. After they feel like they have successfully done this, they share their sentences and discuss which work better or worse and why, than the original sentence.

5. As the final step of the exercise, have students rewrite introductory paragraphs to maintain the “more interesting” voice throughout. As a requirement for the next draft, they must sustain that interesting voice throughout the entire paper, demonstrating audience awareness.

Sample first sentences:

“The fellas and I were hanging out on our corner one afternoon when the strangest thing happened. A white boy, who appeared to be about eighteen or nineteen years old, came pedaling a bicycle casually through the neighborhood” (3). –Nathan McCall,  Makes Me Wanna Holler

“He came to kill the preacher. So he arrived early, extra early, a whole two hours before the evening service would begin” (193). –Edwidge Danticat,  The Dew Breakers

“By our second day at Camp Crescendo, the girls in my Brownie troop had decided to kick the asses of each and every girl in Brownie Troop 909” (1). –Z.Z. Packer, “Brownies”

“I was fourteen that summer. August brought heat I had never known, and during the dreamlike drought of those days I saw my father for the first time in my life” (1). –William Henry Lewis, “Shades”

“My desert-island, all-time, top five most memorable split-ups, in chronological order: 1. Alison Ashworth. 2. Penny Hardwick. 3. Jackie Allen. 4. Charlie Nicholson. 5. Sarah Kendrew.” (3). –Nick Hornsby,  High Fidelity

“I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petosky, Michigan, in August of 1974” (3). –Jeffrey Eugenides,  Middlesex

“I lost an arm on my last trip home. My left arm” (9). –Octavia Butler,  Kindred

Purpose:  A radical revision exercise that allows students to experiment with revision and rewrite their essays from different perspectives, endings, structures, etc.

Description:  Students often dislike revising, particularly at the beginning of ENC 1101. They feel that whatever they’ve written is set in stone and cannot be changed. These exercises, which focus on rewriting a story, show students that revising is possible and can even improve a paper. This exercise allows students to begin with revising one essay as a class so they can get an objective feel for radical revision, and then the revision strategies can be extended to the student’s own draft so they can get something tangible to consider using for themselves. This exercise works well with an early draft of the short story assignment.

Suggested time:  A full class period, continue as possible homework assignment.

1. Have students read “Out from Under the Rug” (2006-7 OOW) before class. 2. Ask students to rewrite a specific scene from the perspective of another character. 3. Rewrite the story with a different ending. Since this story is very dramatic, anything could happen. Have students rewrite the ending of the story using some of these suggestions:

• Rory ends up with Landon
• Rory breaks up with Aidan
• Rory decides to be single
• Landon and Aidan fight over Rory
• Madison confesses her love for Aidan, Landon or Rory

4. Discuss how their revisions have changed the story. Is it better? Worse? How does the reader relate to the characters and the narrative action with the newly revised scenes? Does the story still make sense? 5. Ask students to revise a scene from their own papers from either a different perspective, or to completely change the ending of their story.

Purpose:  To help students differentiate between analysis and summary and then apply that knowledge to their own drafts. This works in conjunction with any number of papers in the 1101 and 1102 strands, particularly well if the students are doing analysis of visual texts in their papers, though it can be adapted for written texts as well.

Description:  Through visuals, this activity asks students to differentiate between summary (this is what happens) and analysis (this is why it happens) by watching a movie clip twice and writing two different texts in response. A successful clip is suggested here, but you will need access to whatever you show (via DVD, uTube, etc). The activity is also adaptable to a workshop format, requiring students to bring their drafts to class.

Suggested Time:  About an hour

Procedure:  Show an action-packed, short (5 min.) scene from a film, such as the clip from Pulp Fiction in which Vincent and Jules go to the apartment of the boys who have stolen Marcellus Wallace’s briefcase (Play it from when they walk into the apartment until they shoot them). This scene works well because there are a number of unanswered questions in it.

Ask students to write a one-paragraph summary of what they’ve seen, giving them +/- 10 minutes. Discuss what they came up with in their summaries, having them read their actual texts aloud. Be sure to note if something they say is analysis. Try to keep them focused on plot so that they understand the genre conventions of summary. Make note of what delineates a good summary on the board (features like tone or objectivity, selectivity or inclusivity, etc).

Show the clip again. Encouraging them to watch closely to see if we missed anything. When it’s finished, ask them to turn their papers over and write a one-paragraph analysis. Make sure to give them at least 10 minutes this time. Discuss their responses again, noting if something is summary. I write the analytical points on the board. This might take a little prodding, but once they get the hang of it, you should have no shortage of responses.

This can also help with the concepts of claims and evidence-- be wary of students jumping to conclusions and ask them for evidence from the text (film) to support their claims. Take one of the responses and start a deeper, discussion-based analysis. What conclusions can we draw about, say, the briefcase in the Pulp Fiction scene? How do we know this?

To adapt this exercise to a workshop:

Ask the students to break into pairs and read each other’s drafts in search of summary, circling the portions they find. Afterwards, have the students discuss how the summary portions might become analysis. Some groups may need a little guidance, others will get it right away.

Purpose:  This short paragraph makes a good handout, or discussion-started on the overhead some time before the final drafts of a paper are due.

Description:  This is not so much an exercise as it is a demonstration for good proofreading skills. I sometimes cut-up and distribute this paragraph to the class, or you could just project it if you have a tech room.

Procedure:  Show/distribute the following for discussion:

According to rscheearch at an Elingsh uinervtisy, it deosn’t myyaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer is at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. this is bcuseae we do not raed ervey lteter.

Purpose:  This exercise helps students learn to become more effective writers of fiction. It could be quite useful in any course in which a composition assignment focuses on writing fiction. 

Description:  Taking into consideration noted author (and retired FSU faculty member) Janet Burroway’s advice that “only trouble is interesting” and studying her example of turning a dull situation into an interesting one, students practice turning a series of dull situations into interesting ones.

Suggested Time:  This could easily take an entire class period. 

Procedure:  Present the following information to your students. In her book, Writing Fiction, Janet Burroway explains a very important aspect of fiction writing:

Only trouble is interesting. This is not so in life. Life offers periods of comfortable communication, peaceful pleasure, and productive work, all of which are extremely interesting to those involved. But such passages about such times by themselves make for dull reading; they can be used as lulls in an otherwise tense situation, as a resolution, even as a hint that something awful is about to happen. They cannot be used as a whole plot.  (29)

Using this quote as a guiding principle, take the following situations and rewrite them. Turn a dull situation into something worth reading. First, here's an example from Burroway's book:

Example of a dull situation:  Joe goes on a picnic. He finds a beautiful deserted meadow with a lake nearby. The weather is splendid and so is the company. The food's delicious, the water's fine, and the insects have taken the day off. Afterward someone asks Joe how his picnic was. "Terrific," he replies, "really perfect."

Example of a situation worth reading about:  At the picnic, Joe sets his picnic basket on an anthill. Joe and his friends race for the lake to get cold water on the bites, and one of Joe's friends goes too far on the plastic raft, which deflates. He can't swim, and Joe has to save him. On the way in he gashes his foot on a broken bottle. When Joe gets back to the picnic, the ants have taken over the cake, and a possum has demolished the chicken. Just then the sky opens up. When Joe gathers his things to race for the car, he notices an irritated bull has broken through the fence. The others run for it, but because of his bleeding heel the best he can do is hobble. Joe has two choices: try to outrun him or stand perfectly still and hope he's interested only in a moving target.

Now, rewrite the following situations to make them more interesting:

Dull Situation #1:  Joe, his roommate, and his girlfriend take a trip to the bowling ally. They bowl three games together, and each person wins one game. There's a group of three high school boys in the lane next to them who courteously challenge them to a team game. The game ends in a tie, and everyone shakes hands afterwards. Joe even promises to help tutor one of them in math, and his girlfriend buys everyone sodas. They all have a great time.

Dull Situation #2:  Joe and his parents take a trip to the movies. They rarely take these trips together, but Joe is confident they will enjoy whatever film he chooses for them to see. He decides on a romantic drama starring Robert Redford and Michelle Pfieffer, and they all enjoy it. Afterward his parents take him out for coffee and pastry. His mother comments on the fine acting, and his father, in a rare display of emotion, cries when asked how he feels about the plot. Joe pats his father on the back, and then leaves them with a feeling of contentment.

Dull Situation #3:  Joe travels across the country to visit an ex-girlfriend. They meet at a restaurant to talk about old times. Both of them are now married, and they each discuss how happy they are in their respective relationships. His ex-girlfriend's husband arrives at the restaurant and buys the three of them a round of drinks. He and Joe have a great time talking about football. They even find ways to give Joe's ex-girlfriend a hard time about the days of her youth. Joe feels no regret about the encounter and arrives at the hotel thinking of his wife. Once he enters his hotel room, he calls her long distance to tell her everything. "I miss you," he says as soon as she picks up the phone.

Purpose:  The goal of Stylistic Revision is to concentrate on sentence construction in later revisions, focusing on concision and detail. It is designed to engage students with their essays on a sentence to sentence level that will enable them to write in a clear, concise, immediate style.

Description:  This exercise should be helpful in the later drafting stages. Students will be required to pay close attention to language and to their closings. By this point, the students should have the bulk of their essays written and are therefore focused on revising and polishing their essays. The design of this exercise is to assist with sentence-by-sentence revision, thereby maximizing clarity and directness.

Suggested Time:  45 minutes

This exercise has two parts:

Part I: Avoiding Passive Voice [Create passive voice handout with examples if you feel it is necessary.]

• Pass out individual copies of  “Another Fish Story”  to students at the beginning of class. Ask them to take 10 minutes to read over it, underlining instances of passive voice and also any striking similes or metaphors.
• Have a brief discussion about what they underlined, including a brief discussion of passive voice, using examples from the essay.
• Students should pick a paragraph of their choice and rewrite with the knowledge taken from discussion (and their own) using active, immediate language.
• Share with class!

Part II: Ending the Essay 

• Now discuss the closing paragraphs of the essay, describing what’s working, what they notice, what strikes them, what doesn’t, etc. Discuss ways to tighten the language, avoiding clichés and generalities. Also discuss how to close the essay without being conclusive, avoiding the traditional modes of restating what’s already been said, etc.
• After discussion have students rewrite the last paragraph avoiding clichés, etc. implementing also what was discussed in Part I.

Have students implement this exercise in their own work for the next revision.

Additional Information:  This exercise is a lesson in language, not in grammar.

Purpose:  To prepare students for workshopping and the writing of their first paper. An easy exercise for demonstrating descriptive writing - and descriptive responding.

Suggested Time:  An entire class session

Description:  This is a way of showing your students which subjects and what language are worthwhile for the paper assignment they are drafting, and also what you expect from workshop sessions. You'll write a 3-page draft (not too long to go over in a class period) of the paper your students are writing to go over with the class in order to model both workshopping and what is possible for the assignment (typically the first assignment). This can be a good exercise to do after the class has read Rick Straub's "Responding, Really Responding, to Student Writing".

Procedure:  Write a 3 page draft on the same topics your students are writing. Experienced TA’s may want to use past student papers of In  Our Own Words  but I advocate writing one yourself. If you write the paper then you can make sure it has all the positive and negative qualities that you desire. Don’t be concerned about the time involved, it is not extensive--I write mine in less than half an hour--just don’t proofread it (remember, you want there to be stupid mistakes and sloppy, undescriptive writing). You can also use the same paper over and over again in later semesters. Be creative, you ask that of your students. If this is a personal paper assignment, and you don’t want to share any moments with your students, make one up, or don’t tell them that you wrote it.

Overall it is a "show, don’t tell" exercise. Rather than tell my students what to do I show them in my own paper. This is an excellent way to show them what types of subject matter and language you think are worthwhile. I want my students to feel as though they can and should write anything they want so I try to choose personal (often embarrassing but serious) topics. I also show them uses of language, such as ways to use curse words effectively in an essay. I find next to nothing offensive and use this as a way of showing that.

However, this exercise can be tailor-made to show whatever you don’t want (repetitive, redundant, too long, too boring, spelling mistakes, grammar errors). However, at the core use some decent writing and some good techniques. The essay I use (for the first assignment) uses a flashback and "show don’t tell" techniques to try to tell the story of an entire night in actual time of a few minutes (both flashbacks and showing are new to and risky for students). I tried to make an opener that would suck-in the reader and make them want to read more (another thing I emphasize in my classes). I also try to get them to use interesting or at least uncommon titles (thus the name of the exercise) that add to the paper. It also works well to make a first and second draft of your paper and show students how to workshop and the process of drafting at the same time. Leave the second draft open for improvements.

The Workshop:

Project the example paper on the overhead screen and workshop it as a class, going paragraph by paragraph. You may wish to print the draft out and use the light board, as actually writing on the draft is helpful for modeling good feedback. Another option is to stand at the computer station and demonstrate the COMMENTS function in Word as you project the document. Choose the option that best replicates the eventual workshop situation your students will soon be in.

As you workshop, praise comments that are useful and don’t let students give responses like "I like that" or "I don’t like that--it sucks." Make them tell you WHY and ELABORATE on why they don’t like something. In essence, show them what you want from them as workshop responders. My classes always found things that I had missed in my own writing, and more often than not, found everything that I was hoping they would find. It is usually one of the best things I do all semester long.

I usually close by asking them how they would respond to this as a first draft. I ask if it has potential, should be scrapped, etc. Then I tell them how I would respond--this tends to give them as idea of what to expect.

Purpose:  The purpose of this exercise is to help students recognize the importance of titles, showing students that there needs to be a balance of creativity and information.

Description:  This is a class discussion activity that begins with analyzing the title of an 18th century chapbook, and then asks students, as a class or in groups, to examine book titles. Finally, students exchange their own essays with titles in order to critique the effectiveness of each title.

Suggested Time:  40 min

Procedure:  Start by reading aloud, or writing on the board (if you have an interactive classroom there are even better ways) the following title. I make a point of not completing it in writing but reading the last of it instead.

"A very surprising narrative of a young woman, discovered in a rocky-cave, after having been taken by the savage Indians of the wilderness in the year 1777, and seeing no human being for the space of nine years. In a letter from a gentleman to a friend."

[A chapbook from America, between 1788-1851. Chapbooks were the Reader’s Digest of the period; cheaply printed and pedaled by traveling booksellers.]

Possible “script” when reading the title:  In this story, “A most beautiful young Lady sitting near the mouth of a cave” [oh, I bet, after 9 years she musta been somethin’ else] is discovered by two travelers in the wilderness. After recovering from a faint upon seeing them, “Heavens! Where am I?” she exclaims, and proceeds to tell them that she and her lover had been attacked by Indians, who murdered her lover and captured her. She chewed threw her bonds [this sound fishy to anyone else?], and in order to escape: “I did not long deliberate but took up the hatchet he had brought and, summoning resolution I, with three blows [she took note to count them, apparently], effectually put an end to his existence [axes will do that].” She managed also to lop off his head, quarter the corpse, and drag it half-a-mile to some foliage she figured could use the fertilizer, and hid it. She’d been growing Indian corn ever since. Of course, once returned home by her rescuers, she is reunited with her father, who’s so happy to see her again he dies and leaves her a handsome fortune. (From Popular Culture in American History, Jim Cullen ed.)

Ask questions like, “Boy, wonder what happens in that story!? Do you want to read it? What’s wrong with it? How does it lose your attention? I explain that print culture has changed in these decades, that books then couldn’t afford advertising or enticing covers to inspire readership, and that no print could be spared for a back cover description. So, the title became the description. People also had much longer attention spans and fewer competing stimuli!”

This leads into the present day, and how this story could be adapted – or what stories/movies they know of that seem to have borrowed this theme. How can we make it better? What would you title the story?

After we’ve exhausted this discussion, I move on to titles of the present, and how/why they work. On the board, write the following title and discuss it:

• How does this title work?
• Does IT make you curious? Why?
• What things do we associate with the term “it” (It’s gonna get you! It’s out there!)
• How does the size of the book make you ironically interested in terms of the title? (book huge, title small = something’s going on with “it”!)

Then, either as a class in groups ask them to examine what the titles make them think and what they imagine the cover of the books would look like.

Lord of the Flies

• Oxymoron creates interest
• What do we associate flies with? (dead things, feces, etc) How does this make the word “lord” more intriguing?
• Carl Hiaasen’s collected editorials from the Miami Herald
• How does it grab attention? Why?
• Dual function, it’s also a statement of Carl’s personal philosophy of metropolitan journalism. “Turn over rocks. Dig out the dirt. Kick ass.”

Something Wicked This Way Comes

• Speaks for itself: what’s coming?
• Turn of phrase is out of the ordinary, and is both pleasing and dissonant to the ear.

All the King’s Men

• Nursery rhyme plays on our common knowledge and we recall the rest of the tale, makes us curious about how this one will turn out
• Begins in mid-phrase, requiring us to fill it in, leaving us hanging 

Where the Red Fern grows

• Where? Curiosity’s raised by implication. Who cares about ferns? There has to be something else going on there, we think.
• The color red paints sinister pictures in the mind. 
• We recall the common phrase “G.I. Joe” and are interested by the switch.
• We know enough about this story by inference to maintain some interest. 

"Let’s Get World Serious" 

• Title of a Sport’s Illustrated article, by Rick Riley.
• How does the switch of the word “series” to the near “serious” have an effect?
• How does it target its appropriate audience – sports fans?

I complete the discussion by extending the invitation: Can you guys think of any good ones, and why are they good?

Then, ask students to exchange their essays and essays titles with each other and critique the titles based on how interesting they are and how well it relates to the essay’s topic.

Purpose:  This exercise stimulates students to enrich their descriptive writing by using a plain object and writing about it in an extravagant way—using lots of detail, metaphor, and imagery. It makes students develop and possibly appreciate a creative approach to the writing method.

Description:  Students will take a normal object and write a creative description and narrative about the object of their choice. By following a set of questions provided by the instructor, students will write a prose style response – not just a list or catalog.

Suggested Time:  30 – 35 minutes

Procedure:  Students should pick an object that they have easy and tangible access – a pen, teddy bear, a washcloth, ID card, whatever they desire. They should then write a creative response using the following questions or a similar format: 

• You look around the room and see your object. How well can you see it? Where is the light coming from?
• You walk over to your object. How many steps did it take?
• Your object is lying next to several other things. One of these things reminds you of something or someone else. What does it remind you of?
• Pick up the object. How heavy is it? Can you toss it in the air?
• Put the object close to your eyes, so close that it becomes blurry. What do you see? (tiny bumps? little lines?)
• Put your object against your ear. Does it make a sound? What does that sound (or lack of sound) remind you of?
• Put your object under your nose. What does it smell like? What does the scent remind you of?
• While you have the object this close to your face, you might as well taste it. Go ahead, stick out your tongue. What is that taste? What does it remind you of?
• You are getting tired of this exercise. Get rid of your object. Dispose of it somehow. How did you get rid of it and how do you feel now that it is gone?

In order for students to successfully complete the exercise, each question must be answered in sentence form. Encourage students to be creative in the description of the object and its purpose.

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Revising Persuasive Essays

Once you finish a first draft of your persuasive essay, set it aside for awhile. When you return to it, you can see it anew. That's what revising means—seeing your work with new eyes. When you revise, you look at your essay from your reader's perspective to make sure your writing includes compelling details and flows smoothly. These activities will help you revise.

Revising for Order for Importance

What is the best way to organize the supporting reasons in a persuasive essay? In most cases, you should lead up to your best reason. This leaves readers with your strongest point clearly in mind. The writer of the "Lost in a Crowd" essay organizes his thoughts so that the most important reason comes last.

Overcrowded hallways, cafeterias, and classrooms make it very hard to teach and to learn.

Supporting Reasons

Overcrowded halls set students up for trouble.

The school cafeteria can be just as distracting.

Students suffer the most in overcrowded classrooms.

Note: Transition words and phrases can help you signal order of importance. As you revise, look for opportunities to add transitions to show the relationship between your ideas.

the main reason

most importantly

the biggest reason

in addition

furthermore

Organize your reasons.

Study the following opinions and supporting reasons. Number the reasons in the best order, 1 being the least convincing and 3 the most convincing. The first one has been done for you. (There may be more than one way to arrange the reasons, depending on your own experience and understanding of each topic.) Make a copy of this Google doc or download a Word template .

Supporting Reasons:

• The addition of vending machines would greatly improve student morale. 2
• Vending machines would cut down on tardiness because students wouldn’t have to stop at the store. 1
• Students who can’t drink milk would have an alternative. 3

Revising to Consider Objections

When you answer an objection in your persuasive essay, you should do so in a fair, logical, and polite manner. The fifth paragraph in “Lost in the Crowd” fairly concedes that fixing overcrowded schools may cost money. But the writer also says the initial cost will benefit the local economy in the future. 

Evaluate objections.

Review these paragraphs. Mark each as fair or unfair, deciding if the writer uses fair and respectful language when discussing opposing ideas. If the paragraph is unfair, rewrite it to make it fair and respectful. Make a copy of this Google doc or download a Word template .

It's true that adding a bike lane to all major roads in our city would be a significant expense, but we could take measures to lessen the burden on taxpayers. For example, we could apply for federal grants or ask for funds from private donors. Overall, adding bike lanes is worth the expense, for it will protect cyclists, lessen car traffic, and improve the quality of life.

Some people say bicyclists break too many rules of the road, and adding more cyclists to the road will just cause more problems. That's an absurd argument. By that logic, no one should be able to use roads. After all, some car drivers break the rules, too. Should we ban cars from the road, too?

A common argument against bike lanes is that they are bad for businesses with storefronts on city streets, but studies actually show that streets that prioritize walking and biking have proven to boost local retail sales by 10-25 percent in cities around the world. So our local businesses may in fact receive an economic boost with the addition of bike lanes.

Check your essay for objections.

Check your essay to make sure you answer objections. If you do, evaluate your responses for fairness. If you don't mention any objections, introduce one or two somewhere in your essay. Then refute, address, or concede each one.

Revising with a Peer Response

Share your writing..

Have a partner read your essay and then respond to it by completing this form. A responder should try to list at least one strong point for each part and, if at all possible, one thing to improve. Make a copy of this Google doc or download a Word template .

Revising in Action

When you revise, you add, take out, rewrite, and rearrange your writing to make it clearer. Here are revisions to one student’s essay.

Paragraph Before Revising

A response to an objection is revised for fairness and a transition is added.

Paragraph After Revising

Revise with a checklist.

Read each line in the checklist. When you can answer each question with a yes , check it off. Make a copy of this Google doc or download a Word template .

• Does my essay deal with a relevant and debatable topic?
• Is my opinion clearly developed with strong reasons?
• Do details (facts, examples, explanations, . . .) explain the reasons?

Organization

• Will my beginning paragraph get readers interested?
• Does the beginning paragraph state my opinion clearly?
• Do the middle paragraphs follow order of importance?
• Do I sound sincere and interested in the topic?
• Do I answer objections in a fair and polite manner?

Word Choice

• Have I used specific nouns and active verbs?

Sentence Fluency

• Do my sentences flow smoothly from one to another?
• Do I use transitions to connect ideas?

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ELA Common Core Lesson Plans

• Create Characters Lesson Plan
• Creative Writing Lesson Plan: Using Details
• How to Write a Cause and Effect Essay
• How to Write a Conclusion for an Essay Lesson Plan
• How to Write a Persuasive Essay
• How to Write a Reflective Essay
• How to Write an Article Critique and Review
• How to Write an Introduction to an Essay
• How to Write a Problem Solution Essay
• Lesson Plan: Effective Sentence Structure
• Lesson Plan: Improve Writing Style with Improved Sentence Structure
• Logical Fallacies Lesson Plan with Summary & Examples
• Teaching Active and Passive Voice
• Teaching How to Revise a Rough Draft
• Teaching Instructional Articles: How to Write Instructions
• Teaching Word Choice: Using Strong Verbs
• Using Imagery Lesson Plan
• Writing for Audience and Purpose
• Writing Transitions Lesson
• Analyzing Humor in Literature Lesson Plan
• Analyzing Shakespeare Strategies
• Fun Reading Lesson Plan
• How to Write a Literary Analysis.
• How to Annotate and Analyze a Poem
• Lesson Plan for Teaching Annotation
• Literary Terms Lesson Plan
• Literature Exemplars – Grades-9-10
• Teaching Short Story Elements
• Using Short Stories to Teach Elements of Literature
• Bill of Rights Lesson Plan
• Fun Ideas for Teaching Language
• Comma Rules: How to Use Commas
• Difference between Denotation and Connotation
• Effective Word Choice Lesson Plan
• Fun Grammar Review Game or Vocabulary & Language Arts
• Lesson Plans for Substitute Teachers and Busy English Teachers
• Lesson Plan: Creating the Perfect Title
• 4.08 – Lesson Plan: Using Semicolons Correctly
• Pronoun-Antecedent Agreement Lesson Plan
• Sentence Combining Made Easy Lesson Plan
• Strategies for Teaching Vocabulary
• Using Tone Effectively Lesson Plan
• 4.12 – Word Choice Lesson Plan: Eliminate and Replace “To Be” Verbs
• Using Voice in Writing Effectively Lesson Plan
• Speaking & Listening
• Teacher Guide Central

Teaching the Principles of Effective Word Choice

Correct word usage begins by understanding the rules of usage that governs good writing. Learn it and teach it with these writing tips.

A Word Choice Learning Experience

A colleague e-mailed me the following:

Yo Dawg! Wazzzzzzzup? I’m glad you got all up here and decided to take a looksie at this here worldliest lesson plashizzle plan! The receptacle of knowledge residing in your cranium will halt the enervating effects of lesson plans based on the boring paradigm. It encompasses Mazlow’s hierarchy of differentiated instruction based on learning strands across the curriculum.

I decided it was time to send him the following writing tips on word choice with an accompanying lesson plan.

ELA Common Core Standards

Teaching effective word choice and usage satisfies the following common core standards.  This will impress your administrator, but bore your students.  I recommend simplifying the language when you write the objective(s) on the board.  And yes, it is ironic that the language standards for word choice chooses words that only a walking dictionary could make sense of.

L.9-10.3 Apply knowledge of language to understand how language functions in different contexts, to make effective choices for meaning or style, and to comprehend more fully when reading or listening. This lesson plan should help. L.9-10.4b Identify and correctly use patterns of word changes that indicate different meanings or parts of speech (e.g., analyze, analysis, analytical; advocate, advocacy). L.9-10.4c Consult general and specialized reference materials (e.g., dictionaries, glossaries, thesauruses), both print and digital, to find the pronunciation of a word or determine or clarify its precise meaning, its part of speech, or its etymology. L.9-10.4d   Verify the preliminary determination of the meaning of a word or phrase (e.g., by checking the inferred meaning in context or in a dictionary). L.9-10.5   Demonstrate understanding of figurative language, word relationships, and nuances in word meanings. W.9-10.5   Develop and strengthen writing as needed by planning, revising, editing, rewriting, or trying a new approach, focusing on addressing what is most significant for a specific purpose and audience. (Editing for conventions should demonstrate command of L.9-10.1-3.)

Word Usage Principles

Share and discuss the following principles of correct word usage.

1.  Use plain words for easily understood writing.

• The most complex ideas can be explained in simple language.
• Peppering your writing with fancy words will drive readers away.
• Use specific, concrete nouns instead of abstract nouns.
• Use active voice.
• Use specific verbs instead of weak adverb-verb constructions.
• Use adjectives and adverbs only when necessary.

2.    Define technical terms and obscure words 3.    Use words correctly. If you’re not sure how to use a word correctly, don’t use it. 4.    Avoid trite expressions, jargon, and cliches. 5.    Edit. Most problems can be corrected with proofreading, a dictionary

Class Discussion

You may want to discuss the following. 1.  If you want to be judged on your ideas, use Standard Written English. Your ability to use Standard Written English reflects a good education and gives credibility to your ideas. 2.  If you have nothing of interest to say and want to dupe the reader, use slang, cliches, mixed metaphors, and regional idioms. 3.  Rules are more lax for informal assignments, journals, and narratives in which the author uses incorrect usage for stylistic purposes.

As a teacher it’s difficult to help students distinguish Standard Written English from the language they use normally. Schaum’s Quick Guide to Writing Essays offers the following advice. 1.    Listen to reputable television network newspeople. 2.    Listen to audio books. Read along with the narrator. 3.    Copy well written paragraphs and essays. 4.    Use imitation as practice.

Revising for Word Choice Lesson Plan Procedures

The best way for students to improve word choice is to improve their word choice.

1.  Instruct students to bring in a draft of a previously written essay. 2.  Instruct students to copy the word usage principles stated above. 3.  Organize students in groups of four. 4.  Instruct students to pass their draft to another group member. 5.  Instruct editors to circle all abstract nouns and nouns of generalization. The editor should identify the word, not change it. The decision to change a word lies with the writer. 6.  Pass papers to the next group member. 7.  Instruct editor 2 to circle all adverbs. 8.  Instruct editor 3 to circle any word they don’t understand. 9.  Instruct editor 1 to circle cliches, jargon, or trite expressions. 10. Instruct editor 2 to circle any error in mechanics. 11. Instruct each student to examine his or her own draft for nouns and verbs that can be replaced by more specific nouns and verbs. 12. Rewrite the essay.

Revision Lesson Plans

Many of the common core standards for language and writing are best taught by revising essays.

• Lesson Plan for Using Transitions
• Active and Passive Voice Lesson Plan
• Use Strong Verbs Lesson Plan
• Replace “to be” Verbs

Last Updated on March 7, 2014 by ELAAdmin

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Lesson Plan Revision, Reflection, and Analysis Essay

A lesson plan is an essential component of any teacher’s strategy. It is designed to structure the content that will be taught to children throughout the learning period. In addition, the plan includes other activities such as family meetings or art therapy lessons that are designed to improve teacher’s understanding of each child’s background and needs. The focus of the teaching process should be on improving student’s knowledge of the subject and guiding them through it to develop understanding of the question. The critical factors to consider are the diffract backgrounds of the community. In a single school, children from different countries, cultures, and families come together. All of these factors have an impact on how the child perceives the information that is given to him or her. It is crucial for a teacher to understand the backgrounds of the students and include these factors in the learning plan of a subject to ensure better learning outcomes.

In order for students to learn, practice, and master content I have applied the in-depth content knowledge and learning resources in the academic disciplines. As Shulman stated, the knowledge of a subject is a foundation for the pedagogical practice that enables the process of explaining ideas to others (as cited by Houseal, Abd-El-Khalick, & Destefano, 2015). Without an in-depth understanding of subjects, it is difficult to explain concepts, answer questions from children and respond to their ideas. “Professional development leads to a change in practice, which leads to a change in student outcomes, which leads to a change in teacher self-efficacy.” (Smith, 2015, p. 107). In addition to knowing the subject, a teacher should understand studying and learning techniques and evaluate the performance of the students as well as his or her performance. Different learning resources can be a great addition to helping children develop their knowledge. For example, art therapy has proven to be an effective way to engage students in the process of learning. As Carter (2016) stated, “children in play can be free to experiment” (p. 53). In particular, this approach is integrated effectively into the learning plan for literacy development. “Playful art explorations as a strategy for developing literacy learning” (Carter, 2016, p. 53). In addition, such method encourages children not to be afraid of making mistakes, which can be beneficial for other, more specific subjects such as math. I have applied the in-depth content knowledge and learning resources to be able to respond to children’s ideas and answer their questions about the materials. In addition, the additional learning resources help children feel freer in the classroom and learn to study more efficiently by making mistakes. These two components are integrated into the teaching strategy.

Proper teaching and learning strategy are essential for achieving positive learning outcomes. The primary goal is to engage students in active learning and exploring the process. The developmental approach refers to different levels of development that children have at a particular stage of their life. My goal when writing the learning plan was to include all children from the class with regard to their development and engage them in the teaching process. I have added several options with different complexity levels for each subject that can be utilized in accordance with the developmental level of the children. Some of the complicated topics will have to be explained in a detailed manner with additional resources – art therapy or games. In the beginning, I have included a test to evaluate which option of the learning strategy should be used in the particular case. In addition, as stated by Carter (2016), engaging family in the learning process can lead to positive outcomes. The family is aware of the child’s learning patterns, which can help understand a better way to present information in a particular case. Therefore, I have scheduled several events to get to know the families of the children. The engagement of the family in the learning process is vital in regards to the background that a child has. There are several approaches, which were utilized in creating an effective learning plan for children.

The cultural approach should focus on the diversity of cultures within the classroom.

Shillady (2014) suggests to” encourage families to visit the classroom and school throughout the year” and host events with them. In my lessons plans, I made space for two events that involved families visiting the school and talking about their cultural background. This approach not only should help children feel more comfortable at school but encourage them to share information about their culture with others. Such engagement should be beneficial for the learning outcomes.

The linguistical approach to teaching is focused on the fact that children from different backgrounds may speak foreign languages which can affect their learning perception. Mostly, in diverse communities, it is common for people to speak different languages. Learning about those differences it the first step for a better understanding of an appropriate teaching technique. As Shillady (2014) stated, many schools have surveys at the beginning of the year in which families answer questions regarding their cultural background and languages they speak at home. This information helps me learn more about my students as a teacher. Allowing children to speak the language they are comfortable with while guiding them into learning and better understanding English is the primary objective of this teaching strategy.

To meet each child’s learning needs and promote positive outcomes I modified the instructions for the lessons. An essential aspect of teaching is to understand the students and what they are capable of. That is why my goal is to evaluate the capabilities of the children, each one specifically to understand what techniques to utilize when explaining the material to them. Some elements can be difficult to understand for specific children. Therefore, the teaching plan should be changed to pay more attention to the particular topic. In addition, some children can perceive information differently. For example, for some listening to a teacher explain the material is less effective than using textbook illustrations and descriptions. The tasks that children perform can be perceived differently as well. To ensure that all children in the classroom can equally engage in a learning activity I have included different learning activities in the instructions. These include listening to the explanations, performing tasks, reading the textbook, listening to supplemental materials, learning through art therapy and others. In addition, I have created several variations of the learning plan with different activities to choose a better fitting one for particular children.

Out of the five subjects, the most difficult to write for was mathematics because in order to properly teach any subject one must understand the concepts of it as a whole, not only some parts of it. For me, mathematics is one of the more difficult subjects; therefore developing a teaching plan for it that would be beneficial for the students was a challenge. I tried to enhance my knowledge before beginning the work on the program. The subject is a matter of professional development opportunity for me, as it emphasizes the importance of in-depth knowledge for a teacher. In addition, it encourages to look for new ways of explaining the concepts of mathematics and looking for different sources of information. As a professional development opportunity, it was a valuable experience that encouraged me to work on my knowledge and teaching techniques to help children in their early childhood stage understand the concepts of the subject. Although when teaching children to understand it, no elaborate theories are utilized, it is essential to have good knowledge to be able to explain different concepts. In addition, some of the students can be interested in mathematics and in-depth learning of it and a teacher’s task, in this case, would be to guide them to proficiency, which would be impossible to do without a clear understanding of the matter.

Overall, the critical focus of the learning and teaching strategy of children should be their background. The development, culture, and language that a child has are essential factors to consider when choosing a proper method of teaching. Having different strategies and incorporating family into the learning activities can significantly improve the process of learning. In addition, the teacher must have an in-depth knowledge of the subject to be able to communicate it correctly to the children.

Carter, L. (2016). The reflection connection: Teachers in touch with families. Exchange, 228, 52-55. Web.

Houseal, A., Abd-El-Khalick, F., & Destefano L. (2014). Impact of a student-teacher-scientist partnership on students’ and teachers’ content knowledge, attitudes toward science, and pedagogical practices. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 51 (1), 84-115. Web.

Shillady, A. (2014). Engaging families in diverse communities: Strategies from elementary school principals. Young Children. Web.

Smith, J. (2015). Transformative professional development: Unraveling the complexities of knowledge, practice, and beliefs. Web.

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Oppenheimer’s Lessons for Nuclear Threats Today

Christopher Nolan ’s biopic of the father of the atomic bomb has been a cultural triumph. Besides its artistic achievements—it has racked up awards and shined again at last night’s Oscars—the film touched a deep nerve in society and reignited public conversations around nuclear risks that we’ve not seen since the end of the Cold War.

People who saw the film were rightly shaken by its vivid depiction  of the bomb’s awesome destructive power. Many have commented on the  existential dread  the film induced. But what’s been largely overlooked in discourse around the film are the urgent, powerful, and specific lessons the film—and its protagonist J. Robert Oppenheimer—have for the world today. 

As inheritors of Oppenheimer’s legacy, we feel an urgent need to speak out in face of surging nuclear risks. We cannot afford to repeat the mistakes made by politicians at the start of the atomic age to ignore Oppenheimer’s warnings and dive headlong into another dangerous and futile nuclear arms race . As the U.S. prepares to spend  close to $2 trillion  on remaking its nuclear arsenal, we must draw on Oppenheimer’s wisdom and take bold action now to protect humanity from the existential threat of nuclear weapons.

The Oval Office scene from the film between Oppenheimer, Truman, and Secretary of State James Byrnes carries profound meaning. It reflects a real meeting that perfectly encapsulates the conflict between two starkly different visions of not only how to manage the atom, but also of how nations should fundamentally relate to each other in a new world rising from the ashes of the old. 

On one side, Oppenheimer, joined by other Manhattan Project scientists and Secretary of War Henry Stimson, understood that other advanced nations were bound to soon discover the so-called “secrets” of the atomic bomb. They knew that, unless the U.S. gave up its nuclear monopoly and established a cooperative international body to make sure that the atom would only be used peacefully, others—chiefly the Soviet Union—would feel compelled to develop their own bomb to restore the balance of power. A free-for-all arms race between powerful industrial nations over the most destructive weapon in human history would make the world exponentially more dangerous and ultimately be a dead end. Only mutual accommodation and good-faith cooperation could guarantee peace and advance the common interests of humanity.

On the other side, however, figures like Byrnes held that the U.S. can and should hold onto its monopoly over the bomb. Fruitful wartime partnership notwithstanding, they fundamentally distrusted the Soviet Union, believing that the Soviets only understood raw power, of which the bomb was the highest representation. Peace could only be achieved through military strength, and relations between rivals must be zero-sum.

Read More: Here’s How Faithfully 'Oppenheimer' Captures Its Subject’s Real Life

Initially, Truman entertained Oppenheimer’s disarmament proposal conceived on the principles of mutuality, openness, and bold U.S. leadership. Known as the  Acheson-Lilienthal Plan , it called for the U.S. to give up its nuclear monopoly, reveal what it knew to the Soviets, and establish an international regime that would control all fissile materials and forbid any additional nuclear weapons development. 

While mindful of the danger of nuclear weapons, Truman was ultimately more sympathetic to Byrnes’ views, dismissing Oppenheimer’s pleas for speedy nuclear disarmament. His eventual offer to the Soviets, known as the Baruch Plan, insisted on unilaterally retaining U.S. nukes until the U.S. was satisfied with other nations’ compliance with nonproliferation, as well as unrestricted ability to inspect and punish the Soviet Union for any perceived or real violations. 

Though the Soviets committed to nuclear disarmament in principle, they felt that Truman’s plan was too one-sided and feared that it was a cover for the U.S. to maintain its nuclear monopoly. As expected, they ultimately rejected the Baruch Plan and developed their own bomb. Thus began the Cold War arms race—conceived on naive and false hopes instead of science that the U.S. could keep nuclear weapons a secret, and that producing more of them faster would make Americans safer—that saw, at its peak, almost  70,000 nuclear weapons . 

After the many crises and  terrifying near misses  that followed—and numerous  unheralded casualties  from nuclear weapons construction and testing—leaders of the U.S. and the Soviet Union eventually stepped back from the brink and made concerted efforts to de-escalate tensions. Successive  arms control breakthroughs  saw dramatic mutual reductions of stockpiles, elimination of whole classes of weapons, banning of nuclear testing, and promises to eventually abolish nuclear weapons.

Yet today, that hard-won arms control consensus has  all but collapsed . From Ukraine to the Korean Peninsula to the Taiwan Strait, the horrific prospect of nuclear use has once more reared its ugly head. Leaders have seemingly forgotten about the terrifying consequences of the Cold War, while citizens—many of whom came of age in a world where nuclear risks became an afterthought—have largely given their governments free reign to launch a  new nuclear arms race . 

While there are  immediate steps  the President can and should take to restart arms control diplomacy, we believe that any lasting solution to today’s nuclear perils requires reimagining our foundational assumptions around global security. Oppenheimer correctly understood that, to secure the Soviet Union’s buy-in on disarmament, the U.S. must lead by example and offer a plan that addresses its rival’s insecurity. He believed in diplomacy, mutual accommodation, and the potential for even rivals to come together around shared interests. Those ideas were as difficult to swallow then as they are today, but he was and remains right. Initially dismissed as naive, he was ironically vindicated by the concrete outcomes of later U.S.-Soviet arms control cooperation. 

We must take his insights to heart and apply them to today’s volatile tripolar nuclear rivalry between the U.S., Russia, and increasingly China . While some urge “strategic competition” between the three powers, declaring that geopolitical flashpoints like Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine preclude any potential for deal-making, we believe that now, as at the height of the Cold War, is precisely the time for the three countries to come to the table. Their mutual self-interests, and the collective survival of humanity and the planet demand it.

Read More: Nuclear Energy’s Moment Has Come

Our political leaders must marshal the courage and vision to overcome their differences, build a new global security architecture fit for our increasingly multipolar world, and move quickly to halt the new nuclear arms race and build a new consensus on arms control and disarmament. The alternative is sliding back down the abyss of nuclear brinkmanship and existential terror of the darkest days of the Cold War.

The start of the atomic age was defined by a costly, dangerous, and ultimately futile nuclear arms race that repeatedly brought the world to the brink of destruction. But it did not have to be that way. Oppenheimer and others offered an alternative path that holds important lessons for us today as global nuclear risks rebound. We must learn those lessons, avoid repeating the mistakes from the Cold War, and stop the budding new nuclear arms race before it’s too late.

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Opinion Forget ‘polarization.’ It’s the GOP’s radicalization.

The notion that the United States is “polarized” into two conflicting, equally stubborn and extreme camps infects much of the mainstream news coverage and everyday chatter about politics. Washington is “broken.” “Gridlock” is a problem. “No one goes out to dinner with someone on the other side.” Such mealy-mouthed language masks a stark dichotomy: Democrats have to move to the center to get bipartisan support; Republicans have become radicalized and unmovable.

This is not “polarization.” It is the authoritarian capture of much of the GOP by a right-wing movement bent on sowing chaos. Turkey, Hungary and other countries with autocratic strongmen are not polarized; democratic forces try their best to prevent their country’s ruin and collapse into total dictatorship. Our political scene, sadly, has come to resemble the global authoritarian assault on democracy.

Oh, sure, it’s fashionable, as departing Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) did , to blame both political parties. “Our democracy was weakened by government dysfunction and the constant pull to the extremes by both political parties. … The only political victories that matter these days are symbolic, attacking your opponents on cable news or social media. ‘Compromise’ is a dirty word. We’ve arrived at that crossroad, and we chose anger and division.” Really?! Who is “we”?

The bipartisan border compromise — her bipartisan bill — was sunk by Republicans . Republicans in the House overwhelmingly opposed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, commonly known as the “Bipartisan” Infrastructure Bill (which President Biden modified to get bipartisan support); almost every Republican voted against the Chips Act , they all voted against the Inflation Reduction Act , and some even voted against the Pact Act , which would have helped veterans . House Republicans have launched phony, baseless impeachment hearings . Senate Republicans filibustered reenactment of a key part of the Voting Rights Act , blocked a bipartisan Jan. 6 , 2021, commission and overwhelmingly refused to convict four-times-indicted former president Donald Trump . The assertion that hyper-partisanship, chaos and nihilism (e.g., threatening to shut down the government, egging on a default and refusing to even vote on Ukraine aide) is equally divided amounts to an outright fabrication — or utter cluelessness.

That’s the same tommyrot one hears from No Labels. CNN’s Edward-Isaac Dovere reported that No Labels has resorted to “accusing Biden of having politically toxic positions he does not actually hold.” Well, if you are asking for millions to run a quixotic third-party race, it sounds better to make him out to be just as extreme as Trump; alas, it is just not true. (Even No Labels apparently understands that: “In a private presentation the group has circulated among members and prospective candidates are two claims that No Labels officials say would be damaging to Biden, even as they acknowledge the claims aren’t true: that he is for ‘open borders’ and that he is captive to a ‘far left’ that ‘wants to abandon Israel’ and is ‘sympathetic to Hamas .’”) To cook up an equivalence, you have to misrepresent Biden’s record.

Biden has actually stood up to the far left in his own party when it lionizes Hamas or demands Medicare-for-all. The left blasts him for being too accommodating, too courteous to Republicans and too hands-off with a listless Justice Department. Biden remains in step with the vast majority of Democrats.

The party’s center-left orientation was evident throughout the primaries. On Super Tuesday, California voters chose moderate Rep. Adam Schiff (D) over progressive Rep. Katie Porter (D) as one of two candidates to run to fill the Senate seat opened by Dianne Feinstein’s death. In Texas, moderate Rep. Colin Allred won the Senate Democratic primary by a mile and avoided a runoff.

San Francisco — yes , San Francisco — has gone moderate. “The liberal bastion of San Francisco pivoted rightward in Tuesday’s election as voters responded to ongoing drug, homelessness and crime crises by approving policies that bolster police and require drug-screening for welfare recipients,” Politico reported . “The results represent a major victory for embattled Mayor London Breed, a moderate Democrat who faces a tough fight for a second full term in November.”

Meanwhile, Republicans nominated for North Carolina governor not a “fiery outsider,” as the New York Times would have us believe (the headline was subsequently changed), but Mark Robinson , who called transgender and gay people “filth” and said gay people are equivalent to “what the cows leave behind” (also “maggots” and “flies”). He has made a series of shocking an inflammatory comments about women and Jews (even quoting Hitler ), remains a staunch election denier and wants to ban all abortions (a view about 90 percent of Americans reject ). Hate speech of the type Trump and Robinson utter would be disqualifying in the Democratic Party.

Robinson will face the state’s no-nonsense Democratic attorney general, Josh Stein, who is very much in the mode of moderate incumbent Democrat Roy Cooper. (Also from North Carolina, “Republican Mark Harris, whose previous election to Congress in 2018 was thrown out after credible allegations of election fraud, won a GOP primary for a newly drawn House seat,” Politico reported .)

Congress has also fallen under the grip of a right-wing bastion that cannot govern itself. The GOP speaker of the House is a Christian nationalist who thinks he was chosen by God and takes direction from the Bible, not the Constitution. No Democrat compares to the likes of Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) or Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.).

Worst of all, Republicans are on the verge of nominating someone literally out on bail , who dines with neo-Nazis , talks about blood purity and invites Russian President Vladimir Putin to attack NATO . Virtually every elected Republican has fallen in behind him — the most extreme, racist candidate since the Civil War. (Even Sen. Barry Goldwater knew Moscow was the enemy.)

Responsible reporting should not cover for Republicans. The MAGA Republican Party has become shockingly irrational and radicalized, fully embracing totalitarianism, white nationalism and radical isolationism.

America is divided not by some free-floating condition of “polarization” but by one party going off the deep end. And that’s a threat to all of us.

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As a Doctor, I Don’t Fear Covid as I Once Did, but I Carry Its Grave Lessons Forward

By Daniela J. Lamas

Dr. Lamas, a contributing Opinion writer, is a pulmonary and critical-care physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.

Walking through the intensive care unit is often a lesson in how much there is to fear.

Just a few years ago, I walked through these halls thinking constantly of Covid, afraid that I would contract the virus in a patient’s room or in a conversation with a colleague. The fear was distracting, sometimes all consuming. But now I am no longer afraid that the virus will leave me seriously ill, and the pandemic is a receding memory. Sometimes it is hard for me to believe that it even happened.

Nearly four years after the World Health Organization’s declaration of a pandemic, the coronavirus is still with us. It probably always will be. And it is still resulting in 500 to 1,500 deaths every week as of the past month — higher than the mortality from influenza but lower compared with previous years. There is also the persistent threat of long Covid , the debilitating symptoms that can persist after an initial infection.

But our response has changed. On March 1, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention began recommending that Americans with Covid no longer need to remain isolated for five days after falling sick. Instead, people can return to their regular activities after they have not had a fever for 24 hours, which is the same recommendation for the flu and other respiratory illnesses.

When I pause to think about what happened in this intensive care unit, in the same patients’ rooms I walk through now, it is remarkable that most of us have managed to return to life as it was before. But that is what we do. We can remain in a state of heightened vigilance for only so long. There is no other choice.

And we are still adapting to a new reality: The virus is endemic. Covid is no longer so different from the seasonal flu and a host of other respiratory viruses, an inconvenience for most of us but a dangerous and potentially mortal threat for some. We have ricocheted in a few short years to acceptance from terror, which leaves us in a strange place: How do a majority of us move on when this virus still poses a threat to a relative few? Can we balance our desire to forget the past few years with the lessons that we, as a country, have learned?

Even having the chance to pose those questions is a step forward that we could not have predicted just a few years ago. The threat of this virus was so great that in the early months of the pandemic, our lives stopped. We were afraid to breathe the air. Now, because of vaccinations and prior infections, our immunity is far greater than it was then, and infections are now typically milder. The devastating Covid cases that drove the earlier recommendations regarding longer periods of isolation are far less prevalent.

The nature of Covid infections is not all that has changed. There is also the simple human desire to move past the pandemic years. I know this feeling firsthand. While working in the intensive care unit, I was thrilled to take off my mask this summer when the hospital recommendations allowed me to do so. And more recently, I was irrationally disappointed when my hospital decided we should once again wear masks in patient rooms, even though that is clearly the right thing to do. The truth is that I just want it all to be over.

But as much as I desire everything to be as it once was, it is a challenge for some to get back to equilibrium. I used to imagine that at some point the virus would disappear and then it would all be over. That isn’t how it happened.

While working in the hospital on a recent shift, I cared for a woman with cancer who had just undergone intensive chemotherapy and then was diagnosed with Covid. Her symptoms rapidly worsened, and by the time I met her, she was intubated. As I examined her in my full personal protective equipment, I realized that she was in the same hospital room as the first Covid patient I ever cared for — another woman who had been completely healthy until the virus tore through her.

Back then, I held my breath during my daily physical exam, desperate to leave the room as soon as I could. But now I took my time. We encouraged my patient’s family to visit. We treated her with steroids and antivirals, medications we now know can save the lives of those with severe Covid. The days of haphazard, fraught treatment of patients separated from those they love for weeks or even longer — they are all a murky memory. We know how to treat this virus. We know how to manage the ventilator. And we know that we can do so while keeping ourselves safe. Even if we get sick, chances are good that we will be OK.

Or so we sometimes think. Just a few doors down in the same unit, I cared for a young woman who had nearly died from a case of influenza. She was on lung bypass for a month. When I met her, she was profoundly delirious and so weak that she could barely move a finger. She was around my age and had been entirely healthy. There was little that separated her from me.

Did her story make me more afraid of the flu? Perhaps it should have, but it did not. This is the story of endemic respiratory illnesses that we see every year. They can be devastating for the immune suppressed, for older people or for the unlucky. That could be any one of us — a fact that before Covid, I was able to ignore.

But it is not so easy to ignore those realities any longer. We all know now what it is to feel vulnerable. Early in the pandemic, people with compromised immune systems noted that they finally felt as though they were not alone — that all of us now understood what it was to be afraid to walk into crowded spaces, particularly without masks. Even as we move into life with endemic Covid and, for most of us, stop masking except when we are sick, we can remember what this virus taught us. As exhausted as we are by the pandemic and as much as we want to forget it ever happened, we know now that we are all connected. The decisions we make about our health affect those around us, and even the smallest actions matter. We have the knowledge and simple tools needed to protect one another.

Just four days after she was intubated, my patient with Covid had improved, and it was time to take out the breathing tube. We gathered around her as she coughed and caught her breath, still weak, still delirious but breathing on her own. Standing at her bedside that day, I thought of that other extubation four years ago now. Back then we were afraid of the particles that could dissipate when we took out the tube, a fear that cast a shadow over even that joyful moment. Now my patient smiled up at us, and I felt myself return the smile under my mask. We are at once in the same place and somewhere entirely new.

Daniela Lamas is a contributing Opinion writer and a pulmonary and critical-care physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.

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