1. In the Sommer's article, she stresses that experienced writers see writing as discovery, a perspective that students lack. In order to become better writers, students need to develop a personal sense of what good writing is so that they can be able to see their writing in their "own" eyes. What are some of the concrete ways in which teachers can help students reach this place in their writing?
2. What is your definition of revision?
2. What is your definition of revision?
Hi Hera,
ReplyDeleteI think that helping students to better understand the more global role that revision should take in the writing process in extremely important and also one of the skills to help them gain. However, there are plenty of techniques that we can employ to that end. On a basic level we can incorporate a larger focus on pointing to structural and global issues with their writing when we respond to it. This will help call more attention to their writing as something that need more of this type of revision and serves as a tool which we can point to when assigning revision of their work in the class. Also, we might provide them with more examples of writing in the process instead of as a finished product. This could be as easy as sharing with them our own drafts and highlighting how we have used these revision techniques to improve our own work. We could also have a lesson that directly asked them to take a short piece they previously composed for the class and revise it during class - asking specifically that they make more substantial changes than sentence or word level choices. Maybe even asking that they revise an introductory paragraph for an earlier paper. This might allow them to have the perspective of re-articulating and argument in a better form that they are already very familiar with.