This reading is definitely the most interesting to me thus far. Personally, I have always been the type of student and writer that valued pre writing, drafting and revising. I was shocked to even hear that others do not feel the same way. In college was the first time I realized that some people do feel like they write their best draft the first time. I am absolutely not that person. I use my first draft to get all my thoughts out on the page and try my best to hit all the important aspects. I am heavy on revision because my piece truly does change dramatically. For me it is not only a time to correct grammatical errors or ensure I am phrasing a line in the best way. I truly move aspects of my text around, maybe add more detail, quote a text, adding points, and clarifying. Most of the time my first drafts are terrible and underdeveloped.
After reading the text, I found it interesting to learn that writing evolved from speech, which cannot be revised. I never thought about that before. It makes sense to me why revision would not be popular in the early days of writing. I even thought about how I revise my papers by reading them aloud as if I am delivering a speech and how that brings me clarity.
Nancy Sommers goes on to discuss how students typically revise. She explored how students often say that they knew something was wrong with their writing but they could not exactly pinpoint it. She says, “The students do not have strategies for handling the whole essay. They lack procedures or heuristics to help them reorder lines of reasoning or ask questions about their purposes and readers” (383). I could not agree with that statement. Often when grading my students’ essays I will conference with them and they tell me they knew something was off. I just do not know how exactly that problem could be fixed in today’s education. I guess we, as teachers, would have to drive home the purpose of writing and less of the structure and grammatical aspects of writing.
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