Essay # 1: How were you taught to revise? When you revise for school, do you tend to focus on micro issues, as the students in Sommers’ study did? Or do you focus on global issues of argument and audience, as the experienced writers in Sommers’ study did? How did you learn your revision techniques? Describe your writing process using Sommers' terms, and then analyze why you write the way you do. Use specific examples from both Sommers' research and your own experiences.

Draft #1

Revision is a process that every writer must go through to produce something worth reading. Journalists, student writers, or someone just writing an email perform this task because it’s important that the people who are going to be reading what had been written understands it. There is no point in writing anything without being able to convey its meaning, and there are rules for this. In fact there are many rules, so many that there are books written on the subject of how to write. As a student we have to take many classes to learn how to write, and to some extent think. There are many different ways of performing the practice of revision, and they are all a little intimidating. Where does a person start? All of sudden you are looking at your own random thoughts spewed all over the page, and thinking to yourself what does this mean? Well most often it means nothing unless you fix it up a little. In Revision Strategies of Student Writers and Experienced Writers, Nancy Sommers explains and gives examples of the differences between people who have been writing for a while and those just learning. Sommer's states that while she was interviewing these two groups that students said they did not revise their writing, while experienced writers revised their writing time and time again until they had something worth letting someone else read. One experienced writer said, “I like the idea that a piece of writing is never finished, just abandoned.” I like this idea too! Anything that has ever been written could have been a little better with one more draft, though there does come a time when it’s necessary to just move on.

Over the years I was taught many different ways of revising by many different people. Students, teachers, friends, even my mom, have their own ways of rewriting. Some people take days, weeks even to revise, and some just glance over the page. What I learned in High School is a blur. It was thirteen years ago, and I think all I can recall is that there was not a lot expected from me. I do know that this affected me later in life when I entered into college. I was told, after my assessment that the first English class I attended would not even count towards my degree. I got an awesome teacher though, and I personally have learned more from him about revision than anywhere else. The most important resource I got from him was to not be afraid to ask for help, and that anything written can always be better. In class he taught us to look for the context of what we write first. To ask questions like, did I achieve the task at hand? Were all the questions answered? Is it clear what I was trying to express? During this process I was taught to ignore spelling and punctuation, for those things mean nothing if there is no clarity. We first practiced organization by doing an outline, which would include; an introduction with a statement that would hook in our reader, body paragraphs with topic sentences, and a thesis statement. We would have discussions in class and exchange ideas, and then join our ideas with our outline. The teacher would make us put our thesis statements on the board and we would talk about the clarity and inclusiveness of the whole topic. We worked in writing groups where we would read our essays out loud to one another to look for mistakes or missing elements. When that part seemed good then we moved on to punctuation, and grammar. We were also encouraged to visit the tutoring center at the school which was very helpful. There you were able to sit down one on one with someone and pick apart every aspect of your essay.

After taking advantage of the services of the tutoring center I decided to join them. Being a tutor helped to enforce what I already learned by practicing it on a daily basis. I went to writing seminars where we would practice different elements of writing, and there seemed to always be something new that I would pick up. We were tested on writing elements often, and given handouts on how we could improve. It was not a class, so there was no pressure for a grade. While working there I read hundreds of essays, and this introduced me to other styles. I learned to revise; I had to because I had to teach it to others. The students that I would meet had different ideas about revision. Most of them would bring me a paper and expect me to proof read for them, but that wasn’t part of my job title. In fact it was discouraged, and could even get you fired. The mission was to improve the voice of the writer, to help with organization and content of their essay, and to make sure that they included all the elements of the assignment.