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I met with my tutee tonight. The assignment he was working on was to respond to/summarize an article in They Say/I Say. He decided to respond to the article by Graff talking about hidden intellectualism. I began the conversation by talking about things not related to the assignment. My tutee seemed a little reluctant to talk about his writing.
One thing I would like to talk a little more about are strategies to help the tutee talk about their writing.
It seemed like what he had prepared for our session was a very rough draft of his paper. I pointed out when revising he might want to pay a little more attention to the grammar. One thing I liked about our session was we were able to talk about how he liked to revise papers. His approach actually reminded me of how some of the "experienced writers" described simply writing a first draft to have ideas down and going back and organizing the ideas later. I obviously haven't seen the finished product but if he follows this strategy he should have a pretty solid final paper.
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In light of the research you've read for today's class meeting, how might you respond to your classmate? You might begin your consideration with general questions related to today's readings, such as
- What is revision?
- How do unskilled writers write?
- How do inexperienced writers' revision strategies differ from those of experienced writers?
6 comments:
Students focus more on the structural components of writing, raising their diction and making sure they don't have any repeated words or sentences. Students opt for "do over, reviewing, redoing, marking out, slashing." A problem and limitation on these students was in writing the introduction and thesis first, it restricts development and possible change in the paper.
Experienced writers found form and shape of an argument in revising which is a constant process. Considering the potential reader also helps shape revision. Unlike the students whose revisions were mainly on sentence structure, the experienced writers made changes on all levels and is non-linear. The experienced writer is more of a seed than a line, first considering what to say, then structuring the argument beneath the surface.
Peer tutors may be able to help their students with revising by making sure they feel comfortable with the possibility of change. Student writers focus on sentence structure rather than writing two drafts because new drafting and limitless revisions is time consuming and thought provoking. In the non-linear model you may start with one thesis and end up with a completely changed focus, and that's okay! It may be better, I think, because that means you have put real thought into a subject,enough to change your mind and therefore write a more convincing paper.
That last post was by Lindsay, Stephen, Sheena, Brett :)
Sydney and Catherine
Revision is revisiting a draft of a paper with the intent to somehow improve it. Depending on the person, a lot of unskilled writers have less organization in their writing and have their own way of going through the process of prewriting, writing and rewriting, but it’s not necessarily fine tuned to where it works to the student’s best ability. We see the main difference between experienced and non-experienced writers in the amount that’s changed in the rewriting process. Student writers tend to see problems in specific words, sentences or grammar mistakes and focus on those small parts. Experienced writers on the other hand, tend to recognize problems on a larger scale and will rewrite many pages to fix it.
For this specific tutor/client relationship, we think it would be good to steer the client away from a focus on grammar. If his paper is in a rough draft stage where the ideas are not yet organized, focusing on grammar or mechanics may disrupt the flow of his paper as he’s writing.
Tutors should always suggest to their clients to try different strategies of revision in order to find out what suits them best. Some of these might include waiting until the end to revise rather than as you are writing so the client can look at their paper as a whole and not in chunks. This could affect the flow of ideas and the student might find that focusing on ideas helps them put their ideas onto paper. Another suggestion is to read your work aloud. When you read silently, you know what you mean and you hear it in your head how you want it to be. Aloud, however, shows you how other readers who are unfamiliar with the work will read it. This can alert your client to problems with transitions, commas, spelling and a lot of mechanical problems they may have otherwise missed in the revision process.
Jeanne, Jake, Bree
We believe that it is a positive thing that the tutee wants to revise so much during the writing process. According to Sommers, when revision is left until the very end, it seems as though it is more of an afterthought.
Unskilled writers look for small things such as punctuation, spelling, and word usage and pass up bigger things such as ideas they could incorporate. Although Perl sees it differently, unskilled writers tend to write without format or process. Normally no procedure is followed and not much research or knowledge about the subject is included.
Experienced writers look at the bigger picture when composing and focus on the smaller details last unlike inexperienced writers who pay closer attention to grammar. Experienced writers follow process more so than inexperienced writers. They pre-write, edit, and revise including more extensive research on their topic.
In this case, the tutor should tell his tutee to get all of his ideas out first, then go back and revise what he has down while adding more of his own thoughts to it. Using research may help him finish original thoughts and make his argument clearer to his audience. The tutor should encourage his tutee to read his work out loud in order to catch his own mistakes. After organization and ideas are incorporated, the tutee should then go back and focus on small things such as grammar and punctuation, but not until the very end of his or her writing process.
According to Perl and Sommers’ research it may be more effective to emphasize grammar at a later date. By definition “unskilled writers” are those who struggle with writing form because they spend too much time tripping over grammar. Sommers point out that “effective writers” are those who revise context and content over grammar. Therefore have more success because they focus on the “big picture” of their writing. They do this by analyzing the effectiveness of their argument and identifying weaknesses.
What you could focus on is encouraging the student to become more comfortable with their argument. A good starting point may be to ask the student what they think they need to work on as a writer. Then integrate your observations. Make sure you look at the paper as a whole verses disconnected parts.
Kara, Katie, Susan, and Meghann
Maria
Luke
Crystal
Safia
In the academic community the term ‘revision’ seems to have multiple meanings. Perl’s definition for revision was more of a form of editing a paper after it was completed. Sommers had a variety of ways to define editing and interviewed students to find that revision to them had different meanings. They basically focused on word usage as a form of revision and ‘experienced writers’ thought of revision of the paper as a whole concerned with the: form, shape and theme. Sommers also stated that the revision should be a method that is used continuously throughout the writing process. It allows writers to focus on a larger picture, as opposed to revising at the end where students then had a very narrow focus for their revision. We, as students, have found that our revision tends to incorporate both Sommers’ and Perl’s theories of revision. From Perl we found that editing small grammar errors in the process of writing the paper was effective. However, when viewing the final product we tend to revise on a higher scale, as Sommers says.
According to Perl, unskilled writers write for a teacher reader. They struggle with applying the abstract grammar rules. It was also stated how they tend to revise during their writing process. Writing about personal subjects peaks more of a passion in the students and the amount of ideas they develop. When students are uninterested in the topic their writing becomes more repetitive. Sommers interviewed student writers and found that they follow the linear structure of writing: prewriting, writing and rewriting. The author argues against the linear model because it limits the amount of revision that takes place. She thinks that revision should be incorporated more during the actual process.
The revision process of an experienced writer incorporated the ideas of form, shape and theme. Whereas, a student writer was more concerned about grammatical errors or changing sentence structure.
To help in this particular scenario of a tutor/tutee session the tutor can incorporate the strategies mentioned by Sommers. Although the tutee has some background in the revision strategies suggested he does not utilize them to the fullest extent. As the tutor, they can provide them with the methods of doing so. To address the issue of the tutee not talking about their writing, the tutor can indirectly ask the tutee to summarize their paper.
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