Thesaurus Distortion

[barclay_barrios]

Have students review the section of the handbook on choosing words and/or tone. Then, either in a computer classroom or at home, have them choose a key sentence from their drafts and use a thesaurus (book or electronic form) to replace every significant word in the sentence (perhaps even multiple times). Bring these altered sentences in for a discussion of how/if they still work. Use the handbook to begin a discussion on how word choice impacts tone and meaning, and then continue that discussion by looking at the word choices in the current reading.