In "Revision Strategies of Student Writers and Experienced Adult Writers," Nancy Sommers illuminates one of the biggest struggle for both myself and many of my students: how to see revision as revision rather than as merely editing. She cites students’ sense that “something larger was wrong,” but they didn’t know how to fix it. They “didn’t think it would help to move the words around.” Students are reluctant to see a draft as something whose thinking can be valuable but whose words can be jettisoned. I sometimes advise students to open up a brand new word document for their second draft of an essay instead of “moving things around” in their existing draft. They balk at this idea. I probably would, too. I’m beginning to understand that this reluctance to begin again, to “re-see” a draft, is linked to the amount of work it takes to even produce a messy first draft. As writers, we are reluctant to discard our words. We slave over them, and we want that work validated. What better way than to keep the words! It’s difficult to understand that the value of our writing might be in the thinking it helps us do, in the way it can create a path into an idea. Sometimes it is best to begin again. My question now is, how can I help my students be comfortable with a more conceptual concept of revision while still validating the work and the words that go into an early draft?
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I like the idea of how you have your students draft on a completely different word document, I think once you get your students to comply with this that it will really help them. It is amazing that students really find it horrible to add or take away from their first drafts when sometimes that is all they need to make a good paper great.
ReplyDeleteI also think that if they delete the single sentence instead of working and re-working it, they may find the solution to their problem. I like the idea of that inner voice that whispers something's wrong. Sometimes the only way to appease that voice is to get rid of what it is whispering about.
ReplyDeleteI liked Marti's method of capturing all of the drafts to evaluate growth. This way the writer can see that the ideas and thought process of that first draft were valuable as a stepping stone. Without revision being recursive, I was never before able to see the value of capturing all of the drafts.
ReplyDeleteI agree, Kelly! I need to build a bit more of that into my drafting sequence. Instead of just having students turn in all drafts, they could also write a revision reflection or memo. Hopefully they will see what you saw!
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