Handouts. Sol Armoskaite.
Overview: These exercises sharpen students’ awareness of clarity and precision in writing. The verbosity and vagueness worksheet helps students identify when language is inflated or imprecise and decide whether—and how—to revise it. The Sharpen Clarity, Specificity, and Scope handout builds on this by focusing on refining research questions for focus and manageability.
Uses: This pair of materials supports instruction in revision and rhetorical precision. They can be used to help students recognize the difference between wordiness and well-developed explanation, diagnose vague or unfocused phrasing in their own drafts, and practice narrowing overly broad research questions into ones that are answerable within the scope of a paper.
They work well in first-year and intermediate writing courses, particularly at the point when students are moving from topic exploration to developing arguments or refining research questions.