SQR 3

Revision Strategies of Student Writers and Experienced Adult Writers
Summary

 

Nancy Sommers. “Revision Strategies of Student Writers and Experienced Adult Writers”. College Composition and Communication, Vol. 31m No. 4 (Dec., 1980), pp. 38-388.


   Throughout the article Nancy Sommers analyze revision strategies based in a study case, she defines the revision process “as a sequence of changes in a composition – changes which are initiated by cues and occur continually throughout the writing of a work.” (380).
   The case study, in which the author based her work, refers to two groups of writers; student writers and experience writers. Each writer was assigned to write three essays and to rewrite each essay twice (total of nine). The essays were analyzed and categorized by the writers’ changes. They were two classifications; four revision operations (deletion, substitution, addition, and reordering) and four levels of changes (word, phrase, sentence, and theme).
   Students described the revision process as a “rewording activity” (381) where they only change the words for more formal words (synonymous). Considering the text as something to be communicated, not discovered nor acted upon. Students have being thought to have a “thesis statement as a controlling device” (382) and to avoid lexical errors as well as repetition.
   Experience writers see revision as a “recursive process” (386) where they add details, remove details or reorder their ideas, in other words is when they “shape their argument” (384). They also see revision as a “re-view” (385) where they use their strategic attempts “to manipulate the conventions of discourse in order to communicate to their reader” (385).


Question #5
Choose one of the quotes and explain what Sommers means by it. a.) “What is curious, however, is that students are aware of the lexical repetition, but not conceptual repetition” (382).

   The author is trying to emphasize how the students are more focus in the vocabulary repetition ignoring the repetition of the content. The author mentions how the students have very good strategies to manage their words and phrases, and how they see revision as a rewording activity. The students only focus in vocabulary because students believe that they already have in their text what they need to say. The reason for them to believe so is because they don’t let themselves go out of their thesis statement. They have planned what they want to say even before they started writing which limits them to discover what they really want to say. For example, in my writing assignments I would most of the times private myself from discovery by stating a plan for my writing since I know that it takes a while for me to discover what I really want to say. However, no matter how I try to make the process of writing quick, I always have to do a minimum of two drafts for every assignment I write. Now that I have read this assignment I see how it’s important to fully understand revision as a recursive process where; you discover what you want to say, you give shape to your argument, you make it understandable for the reader, and where you check your vocabulary as well as your grammar. As you write is important to let yourself discover but also be conscious that even experienced writers see revision as a process that can go on forever.