SQR 3

Maria Andrea Martinez
ENG 1320/1301 158
Trang Phan
09/06/2010
Revision Strategies of Students Writers and Experienced Adult Writers
Nancy Sommers. “Revision Strategies of Students Writers and Experienced Adult Writers”. College Composition and Communication, Vol. 31, No. 4 (Dec., 1980), pp. 378-388.
Summary:
Nancy Sommers explains the difference between experienced writers and non experienced writers. She noticed from a study she performed on experience writers and college freshmen that college students would not really care about their writing not give their full attention. They would only revise and edit their papers like if it was nothing. Sommers made the writers write three different types of essays, expressive, explanatory, and persuasive. Then the essays were analyzed by counting and categorized by the writers’ changes. There were four levels of changes which included phrase, word, theme, and sentence. It also contained two different classifications and four revision operations which pertained deletion, addition, reordering, and substitution. Sommers examined that the students were not comfortable using the terms revision or rewriting. The students would use other terms for instead of the term revision, they would use “scratch out and do over again”, this was something they were familiar and comfortable with. As for the experience writers, they were more comfortable and aware with their writing techniques. Experienced writers would often use structural expressions like “finding a framework,” “a pattern,” or “a design.” These writers tend to write more than just one draft, they rewriting and revise as they go writing their story or article.
Question: What are the revision strategies of experienced writers found in Sommers’s studies? What can you learn from those strategies?
Response:
When revising, experienced writers describe their primary objective by finding the form or shape of their argument. They tend to use structural expressions like “finding a framework,” “a pattern,” or “a design” for the argument. The writers share that the first drafts are just attempts to define they will be writing about, their second draft they observe the patterns of development and decide what should be included or excluded. Experienced writers say their drafts are “not determined by time” rewriting is a “constant process” that they feel like they “can go on forever.” Then there comes their second objective, focuses on their readership. They will revise and rewrite their writings if they think any part of the reading theirs readers might not like or was not what they expected. The experienced writers believe that they have learned the causes and conditions, the product, which will influence their reader, and their revision strategies are geared towards creating these causes and conditions. Revision strategies are more of a process than communication; they are a part of discovering meaning altogether. This creates dissonance, process by which writers recognize and resolve the dissonance they sense in their writing. What I can learned from these strategies is that whenever I write a paper I should revise and rewrite and think about what my reader wants to read about or how they want it explained.