Pickens 7/12

In Revision strategies of Student Writers and Experienced Adult Writers Nancy Summers identifies “four revision operations…deletion, substitution, addition, and recording” as well as “four levels of changes…word, phrase, sentence, theme (the extended statement of one idea)” (77). She traces the common use of these operations and changes through the two test groups and sees that some are more common to one group than the other. What other operations or levels might we add to these lists? What types of lessons might you use to help move student writers from the more mechanical/word choice level of revision to the more concept/idea driven level of revision seen in the more experienced writers?

            Through Teaching Grammar for Writers in a Process Workshop Classroom Wendy Bishop traces lack of grammar instruction as well as the development of multiple “grammars of style” and how they can be used to give students new tools to use in their own writing (180). She laments the teaching of dominant grammars of style over others, saying “we may severely limit grammars for writers in order that their formal writing approaches the official norm” and possibly silence student voices by “foregrounding the dominant grammar and muting or silencing alternate grammars” (181). How are we, as instructors, to navigate our own focus on particular grammars in classrooms where our goal is to teach students how to write in particular styles that are acceptable in academia? Where do we, in overstressing norms such as modern American usage, actually risk erasing part of our students' identities in their own writing?