I was looking through the EMU online catalog of offered classes and came across one that could use some improvement. I applied a few diagnostic rules that I learned from Williams book on style (Style: Toward Clarity and Grace) and I would like to share with you what I came up with.
Here is the original blurb about a methods course on media usage in education.
EDMD 345 – Media for the Classroom Teacher
A methods course in which students will produce instructional materials in their teaching area and demonstrate the use of these materials in the classroom environment. The selection, utilization, and evaluation of teaching materials. Various types of media production and utilization equipment.
Okay, now here is my revision of the three sentence course description;
This class will be a methods course where students create classroom teaching materials used for instruction. The teaching materials will be specific to students’ own content areas and will be selected, utilized and evaluated according to various types of media production and other utilization equipment.
As you can see I shortened the description into two sentences but that is not the main reason why it is improved. For one thing, I applied Williams’ First Two Principles of Clear Writing supplied in chapter 2 of his book and created characters, or subjects for the blurb. The three main characters I came up with were the class itself, the students, and the teaching materials. For the first sentence I applied the first principle of Cohesion in chapter 3 of Williams book by deciding what information could already be known or assumed by the reader. I figured that they would know what the term methods course means, but the new information is what would be required of the student for this particular course and that is why I stressed that point at the end of the sentence.
I decided to combine sentences 2 and 3 from the original description because I noticed the extended use of nominalizations. Williams points out that nominalizations can assist prose (if they are used to sum up actions which were already mentioned) but this was not the case with the course description. Instead I changed the nominalizations back to verbs in order to give action to the subject of teaching materials as per the advice given by Williams in chapter 2.
Finally as a topic I think my revision maintains the intended purpose of the original. Both are supposed to be course descriptions and I just happen to think my revisions allow for more of a description.
