Teach English Writing – How to Self-Edit

Main Idea

When faced with the task of revising English text on their own, ESL students often hesitate because they do not know what to do. As a result, they may focus on writing conventions, like grammar, spelling or punctuation without addressing higher order challenges like cohesion or style. A few students seem to think that rewrite means recopy. This lesson focuses on one specific rewriting objective and three techniques to help students go beyond proofreading during the redrafting stage.

The objective is enable ESL students with the ability to create emphasis by putting the most important idea at the end of the sentence. To accomplish this task, students will learn how to manipulate three sentence patterns:

1. Flip a sentence
2. Create appositives
3. Add details with dependent clauses

1. Flip a Sentence

No need to add or delete words. Just move the text around to create a different word order and effect. This is a good technique when the end of a sentence has a prepositional phrase which doesn’t need to be there.

Examples

a) In this sentence, I don’t want to stress the day or destination; I want to emphasize the terrible weather conditions.

• FIRST DRAFT: I walked in the heavy rain to the department store on Saturday.
• SECOND DRAFT: On Saturday, I walked to the department store in the heavy rain.

b) Compare the stylish effect of these two sentences. Travel writers often use the second sentence (begin with a prepositional phrase) to describe attractions and then provide the conclusion (the main idea).

• FIRST DRAFT: Busan is a great city to visit because it has verdant mountains, shimmering beaches and fresh seafood.
• SECOND DRAFT: With verdant mountains, shimmering beaches and fresh seafood, Busan is a great city to visit.

2. Appositives

Make one high impact sentence by combining two sentences. Take the key words from one sentence and, usually, put them between two commas. In effect, you create a noun phrase which modifies another noun.

Examples

a) Here is a simple example that combines two sentences. Moving to Asia is the key point to stress.

• My uncle is an engineer. He is moving to China.
• My uncle, an engineer, is moving to China.

b) The two sentences below are wordy. We can simplify the idea by combining them with an appositive. Appositives allow us to put the important ideas in the middle or at the end of a compact sentence to emphasize the frequency (every morning) or the dog (a cute black poodle).

• FIRST DRAFT: Scotty was a cute black poodle. My grandfather played with Scotty every morning.
• SECOND DRAFT: My grandfather played with Scotty, a cute black poodle, every morning.
• SECOND DRAFT: Every morning, my grandfather played with Scotty, a cute black poodle.

3. Add Details with Dependent Clause

Provide extra information by adding a dependent clause at the start of the sentence. A dependent clause is a groups of words which do not make a full sentence so it cannot stand by itself. The dependent clause usually provides information that tells the reader more about when, where, why or how.

Dependent clauses often begin with these words:

• after,  although,  as,  because,  before,  even though,  if,  since,  though
• unless,  until,  when,  whenever,  wherever,  while

Examples

In this example, the dependent clause adds details about when I left home:

• FIRST DRAFT: I left my house at six-thirty in the morning and drove to work.
• SECOND DRAFT: After eating soybean stew for breakfast, I left my house at six-thirty in the morning and drove to work.

In this example, the dependent clause adds details about why I didn’t do something:

• FIRST DRAFT: I didn’t do my homework.
• SECOND DRAFT: Because I partied all weekend with my friends, I didn’t do my work.

Worksheets

Click the link to get practice questions and answers on a pdf file.

Notes:

The genesis of this writing idea came from classroom observations plus online materials, including this webpage.

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