Paper on Revision in Writing

8/3/2019 Paper on Revision in Writing

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Tyler Morgan

Professor Kirchmeier

English 401

December 5, 2011

Revision

There are many steps in writing that will help create a successful final product,

but none more important than revision. Revision is the step that happens after the first

draft has been written and takes place constantly until the final draft has been completed.

Almost everyone at some time or another has quickly written something down, met the

length requirement and submitted it without looking at it a second time. When this

happens a polished piece of writing is extremely rare, even for experienced writers.

When I would write essays in high school I assumed revision and editing were the

same thing, which they are easy to confuse if not properly taught. During revision, we

move paragraphs about, insert new pages, and discard whole chunks of prose, reorganize,

and come up with new ideas(White, p.41). It would be hard to honestly tell someone that

I did any of these things myself or witnessed any of my classmates do them in high

school. Teachers are handcuffed with such a constraint on time that they are almost

forced to accept a rough draft as a final draft. My confusion between revision and editing

was mostly because teachers used the two terms in the same ways expecting the same

outcome and my revision/editing work was always good enough to squeak by. When

students or writers in general finally need or are expected to revise something they are

going to struggle if they do not know how to properly revise. Editing is something that


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students are always taught and is what many will do instead of revision, but editing is

geared more towards grammar as opposed to the content of the writing.

There are many steps that go in to revision as well as multiple areas that should be

focused on; and when laid out for someone they can seem almost unnecessary to focus on

but can make a final product much better. I believe there are four important steps in order

for the revision process to be completed well, and if I were to be responsible for creating

a lesson plan for a class for a whole year I would make sure to spend sufficient time

discussing each of these topics with the students to help ease any fears they may have

about revision.

First is the steps in revision, the students should work on revision in different

steps and during these steps they should be able to successfully eliminate unnecessary

content. The student should be able to identify both the audience and the purpose of their

writing and should be able to answer the question ofdoes the work fit? During this step it

is also important they discover the main point of their writing, in doing this they are

identifying their thesis statement and they can also create a catchy title for their

audience, which can help draw in a reader. This is also a time to make sure that the work

flows well and reads easily. Flow will come from cleaning up the language of the writing

and making the necessary corrections to grammar is the main focus in this step.

More times than not students need an extra push in the right direction and need to

be specifically told what is it they should be looking for when revising their own work; I

believe that the second thing to focus on is simply a list ofthings to focus on which

includes a specific list for students to give them an idea of simpler ways to revise. The

things to focus on contain, but are not limited to voice, ideas, word choice, sentence


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fluency, conventions and organization. While some may find it difficult to find the voice

of their paper it may be easier to allow the students to read each others work and focus on

the voice of their peers writing and what they thought of it. This will allow the students to

give each other feedback on their work at the same time allow for fresh eyes to see their

writing in a new way that the author has yet to find. From my experiences as a student

trying to write in a high school class I found there were only two ways I had ideas when

it came to writing; I either had so many ideas I couldnt narrow anything down to make

sense in a logical way and feel like I didnt leave anythingout or I simply couldnt think

of anything and was completely trapped by having no ideas at all. By the time a student

reaches the revision stage they should already have something written, and they are the

only person that needs to understand their writing at that point because they are still in the

process of writing. By reading over their writing closely they will almost always find

things that they think should add to their work or something that may just be better left

out.

Word choice is something I never thought about as a writer until I was in a

creative writing class in college and my teacher suggested that I use more descriptive

words to help my readers see or feel my writing. Most students in a high school

classroom are likely to write what they are thinking as fast as they can and make sure that

it is just good enough, without thinking if they could improve the language they are

using. Steve Peha describes of this with a student who may use the sentence I was

running somewhere in their paper and they could change that to a more descriptive

sentence such as I wasjogging or I was sprinting. Peha says that by using the verb

running you learn that the student was running, but in the second sentence you also learn


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how the student was running(Peha). Sentence fluency is something that a lot of students

also struggle with because they have so many ideas going at once that they just jump

from idea to idea and write them all down as fast as they can without really thinking how

it will be read for someone who isnt thinking the same way as they are.

Peer editing is something that can also help in this area because it allows for those

fresh eyes again to look at their writing, or simply allowing the students to read over their

writing again maybe a few days after they have written the draft they are going to revise.

Organization of their writing will also come with good sentence fluency, because it is the

same concept just on a larger scale as it is the focus of the paper as a whole and not just

single sentences or cohesion of a paragraph.

Conventions are something that is often left out when writing but is one of the

morebasic aspects in writing. Conventions include spelling, punctuation, capitalization,

grammar, and paragraphing. The writer should use conventions to enhance the readability

of the paper. Spelling should be correct on all words. Punctuation should be smooth and

guide the reader through the paper. Capitalization should be used correctly. Paragraphing

should reinforce organization. The writer may manipulate conventions for effect(Steele).This is most likely to be the last thing to focus on before submitting a final draft of a

piece of writing, to focus on the mundane aspects in writing.

The third idea to help students create successful writing is to focus on the proper

use of their thoughtshots and snapshots. Snapshots are used when the writer looks closely

at details within their writing and thoughtshots can be defined as a snapshot that simply

happens within a characters head. Barry Lane believes that students can improve the

writing by adding snapshots(44) and that if students are stuck in snapshots(students)


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can improve the writing by adding thoughtshots(45). These are two important things for

writers, especially students, to focus on because a lot of them believe that if they think

something is implied, everyone will think it in the same manner. It takes time for writers

to realize that writing does not work like that; readers come from all sorts of different

backgrounds and will interpret everything in a variety of ways. Less experienced writers

have a story in their heads and they will do their best to write that story down on paper

and get the main point across to readers, but there are so many small details that they

leave out that if added would make their writing that much better. To break it down for

students I find it easy to remember when a snapshot is saved for when I want to use my

senses while writing, so if I want to relate a smell, sound or taste to my reader I will use a

snapshot to successfully do so. A thoughtshot is simply what a character is thinking in a

story; this can be done easiest by including dialogue throughout and include emotions or

feelings that would be obvious for any reader to pick up on. If a student is not noticing a

good place for a thoughtshot it will be helpful if the teacher notices a spot that could

benefit from the use of a thoughtshot and the teacher could simply ask the student what is

your character thinking here? How can you show me that is how the feel? Which should

get the student thinking deeper about the meaning of their writing.

The last thing important thing I believe students should focus on during as part of

the revision of their writing is the way in which they interpret the comments left by their

teachers. Many students believe that if they simply correct the things that the teacher

highlights and mentions on a rough draft and they turn in their final draft it will be A+

quality. Most of the time this can be attributed to the laziness of a student or the lack of

time they have to work on something. Also teachers sometimes do not realize it but they


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can affect their students final draft greatly by what they write on their rough drafts.

Teachers need to make sure that their expectations for the students are clear and to use

clarity while grading student writing, and also the students need to remember to find

more things than what the teacher has already pointed out to revise. Teachers can help the

students a lot by just asking questions on a rough draft of a piece of writing. A question

will cause the student to stop and think deeper about what they wrote and try to explain

their reasons behind it as best they can by revising it for the next draft. For example if a

student were to write The dog jumped over the fence.The teacher could ask What

kind of dog? How big was the fence? Did anyone see the dog jump the fence? These

questions may not necessarily cause the student to create a perfect snapshot for their

readers but it will cause them to think deeper about their writing and try and improve

their prose for the next draft. Teachers also need to remember that it is simply a rough

draft, and if it is not necessarily a good draft, it is not the end of the world and to not

come down too hard on the student. Many students are very sensitive to the way people

interpret their work, especially writing because it is such a personal thing that students

really have to work on by themselves and if they are doing the best that they can and the

teacher comes down on them unfairly and crushes their spirits, the odds of them ever

wanting to write again are pretty slim.

In an article titled Readin, Ritin and Revision G.E. Cavin argues,

...successful learning is a process of constant revision(120) Cavin also states that a

problem in secondary classrooms is that there is little composition being done, and

obviously little activity in writing revision(120). Cavin believes this to be an

unfortunate disadvantage for students for writing prose and then revising it is a very


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practical device for secondary students to acquire new knowledge and reinforce

old(120). Cavin also believes that there are two broad common approaches when it

comes to focuses on the revision of student writing. One is the careful identification and

correction of spelling, punctuation, and grammar errors with a secondary concern for the

ideas in the composition. The second is a primary concern for the development of ideas

and thought and a secondary concern for editing (122). It may seem that these two ideas

are polar opposites, and in ways they are, but Cavin believes that it is possible to merge

them together if planned correctly. The key to this is that fewer papers need be written

and that different aspects of the revision process should be given a different emphasis at

different times(122).

In the past I have always thought that teachers would never allow much time for

revision because they expect the students to already have done the proper revisions prior

to submitting their assignments. But after researching more about revision it seems that

the reason that time is not set aside for revision is simply that there is not enough time.

Teachers have to meet so many specific requirements and are expected to cover so many

different topics throughout the year that they run out of time. For pre-service teachers it is

most important that we make sure not to leave revision out of the writing process,

because we are the next generation of teachers and the way we teach will affect how

students write for many years to come.

Also it is important to remember the times we have felt lost in college when

expected to revise our writing, if we were not allowed the appropriate time for revising or

instructed on the proper steps to make revision easier. It is the responsibility of the

teacher to set aside time somewhere in the writing process for revision. It may not be


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easy to do and it will take a lot of careful planning in order to implement sufficient time

for revision in a classroom. Many students suffer from not being taught how to revise

properly and time needs to be given for discussing the proper steps in revision.

Jill Fitzgerald and Lynda Markham completed a study on students and their

ability to revise their work. The goal of the research was to discover whether or not the

instruction of revision actually effected how the childrens knowledge of the revision

process and their ability to make revisions on paper(3). During the research two

groups were created, the revision group was given proper instruction on revision and

how to successfully revise, and a control group that was let loose and told to revise

their writing. Not to my surprise they found that the group that received the instruction

gained knowledge of how to make desired changes(17). While both groups were

expected to help their peers revise, the revision group also was able to make more

specific suggestions(17). After instruction the revision group improved their efforts to

make revisions on paper and when compared with the control group the revision group

made more revisions (17). Finally the revision instruction affected rated quality of the

childrens stories across drafts. Judgments of quality for the revision group tended to

increase (throughout the study) whereas the same judgments for the control group

remained relatively stable(17).

This study helped show me that it is not alright to simply set aside time for

revision in the process. Before students can ever be expected to revise their work they

need to be instructed on how to do so. I have yet to teach an entire class myself nor have I

sat down to draw up a lesson plan for a whole year for a single class, but in speaking with

teachers in the past it seems to be the consensus that revision is low on the totem pole. It


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may be that if students can turn in satisfactory work without fully revising their work

then it is unnecessary to spend time revising while you could be meeting another standard

for the class in the same amount of time.


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Works Cited

Cavin, G.E. "Readin', Ritin' and Revision." Taylor & Francis, Ltd. 57.3 (1983): 119-123.

The Clearing House. Web. 23 Nov 2011..

Fitzgerald, Jill, and Lynda Markham. "Teaching Children about Revision in Writing."

Taylor & Francis, Ltd.. 4.1 (1987): 3-24. Web. 29 Nov. 2011.

.

Lane, Barry. "Twenty-First Century Revision." Teaching the Neglected. Ed. Thomas

Newkirk and Ed. Richard Kent. Portsmouth: Heinemann, 2007. 39-46. Print.

Peha, Steve. "Teaching That Makes Sense." www.ttms.org. Teaching That Makes Sense,

n.d. Web. 30 Nov 2011..

Steele, Kimberly. "Kim's Korner for Teacher Talk."www.kimskorner4teachertalk.com.

Kimberly Steele, 14 nov 2007. Web. 30 Nov 2011.

.

White, E. M. (2006).Assigning, responding, evaluating, a writing teacher's guide. (4th

ed., pp. 25-47). Boston, MA: Bedford/st Martins.
http://www.kimskorner4teachertalk.com/http://www.kimskorner4teachertalk.com/http://www.kimskorner4teachertalk.com/http://www.kimskorner4teachertalk.com/

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