Understanding Revision
The articles we read for class today all discussed revision, and many of them discussed the fact that several high school classrooms of today and yesterday have students believing that revision merely means adjusting occasional words here and there. Students also tend to dread revision because they feel it’s a consequence for writing a bad paper, “They see it as a punishment, a penalty for writing poorly in the first place� (Susan Tchudi, 27).
I also experienced the hate of revision during my high school years. There was never much focus on the activity, and my classmates and I often had a just-get-it-done-for-a-grade type of attitude, so I too was one of the rascals who revised by only correcting occasional words and rewording SOME sentences. In college, however, I grew to understand the importance of revision and the opportunities it presents for us to grow as writers. Perhaps this is because of what Donald Daiker mentions in his book Writing and Response: Theory, Practice, and Research. Donald mentions statistics of more errors than praises commented on in high school papers, versus the more abundant praise given in scholarly college papers. (Note to self: balance praise and constructive criticism on papers!)
As a high school teacher then, we should attempt to make revision sound more important and appealing to high school students. Vicki Spandel’s book The 9 Rights of Every Writer tells us that students have the right to write badly. As teachers we should perhaps encourage awful writing to promote risk-taking and free-writing, “You need to create a lot of garbage to get at the heart of it – the real message, the thing you want most to say, the voice that is really you� (Spandel, 65). Revision then, may not seem like a punishment, but rather like a process to redefine one’s thoughts (recently discovered in the first ‘garbage’ paper) and organize them in a way that the selected audience can understand.
The link below will bring you to a website with a link to watch a video on revision. The video discusses revision and suggests different strategies to incorporate in the classroom. You will need to create a password to watch the video, however – my apologies!
http://www.learner.org/resources/series128.html#
Comments
Nice post, Rebekah! I, too, hated revision in high school and thought I was pretty clever when it came to "switching sentences around" to prove I had spent some time re-working my papers. Also like you, I learned to appreciate revision in college. In fact, revision became more of a "process" for me in general; I began to think of it as re-writing, rather than revising. I think that's because in college, my classes encouraged me to think of bigger ideas - topics that were more relevant to my life and required more time and effort than my high school papers asked of me. Oftentimes, I wasn't even sure I knew how I felt about a topic I was writing on until I had approached it from a few different angles. The important question, then, becomes how can we, as future English teachers, create writing assignments that are meaningful enough for our high school students that they will want to spend time re-working their papers until they've turned their garbage into beautiful poetry or prose? (when you figure it out, let me know!) :)
Posted by: Katie | February 12, 2007 9:44 PM
See what happens when you write early? You get people to respond to your posts. I write early, but no one responds anyway.
I liked what you said about certain students not taking the time to make strong edits. Any ideas on how you can create a sense of accountability in your students---to make them WANT to help each other? Are you going to have a bunch of angels like our author does? Ones who realize that an A for the group is the same as an A for themselves. Or do they just exist in Hallmark cards?
Posted by: Jeff | February 12, 2007 9:50 PM
If only we could have all angels in our classroom who would be eager to do anything we ask of them..... But Jeff, I think we can make them WANT to help each other by placing the grading focus higher on revision rather than the final product. If we maybe put more emphasis on the progress students make rather than their outcome (because it is okay to fail the outcome as long as they put their hearts into the assingment), then maybe students would WANT to help-in hopes that they recieve a better grade. We'll have to test out different ways to see what works best with our students.
Posted by: Rebekah | February 21, 2007 8:06 AM