lesson seven: revising

Lesson SevenRewriting

Lesson Objectives1. To gain an better understanding of the

writing process as a recursive practice.

2. To gain practical teaching skills that will positively influence our students, helping them to become better writers.

Introduction

Not merely a corrective process, but also a teaching process

Make better writers, not only better papers

Introduction

Ideal vs. Reality

Introduction

Students’ Attitudes Toward Rewriting1. I wait until the last minute, so there's no time to

rewrite.

2. My first draft is the best I can do. I can't improve it.

3. I don't know where to begin, and I wouldn't know when to stop.

4. Frankly, I'm lazy.

5. When I try to change sentences or idea, they sometimes end up worse.

Introduction

Students’ Attitudes Toward Rewriting6. I don't really care about what I'm writing, so I

just want to get it over with quickly.7. Rewriting is too messy. I like to work with

clean looking pages.8. I'm such a bad writer I hate to read my own

writing.9. Rewriting is my instructor's responsibility.10. Rewriting is painful. I can't stand it!

Rethinking The Writing Process

Not A Linear Process1. Prewriting

2. Writing

3. Rewriting

Rethinking The Writing Process

A Recursive ProcessThe composing process is not a linear sequence

of separable stages; prewriting, writing, and rewriting are concurrent activities, repeated over and over again as the writer comes progressively closer to resolving incongruities between what they intend to say and what the discourse actually says.

Rethinking Rewriting

RewritingIncludes both editing and revision.


EditingEditing is polishing a text to clean up

misspellings, to change punctuation, to straighten out grammatical problems. In other words, LOC. Editing takes place in one of the last stages in the writing process.


Lower Order Concerns (LOC)1. Grammar

2. Word Choice

3. Spelling


Errors & MistakesSearch for patterns.


RevisionRevision = Re + Vision. It deals with HOC.

Instead of thinking of revision as an activity at the end of the process, what if we thought of revision as a process of making a work congruent with what the writer intends--a process that occurs throughout the writing of a work?


Higher Order Concerns (HOC)• Focus / Thesis

• Purpose

• Audience / Reader

• Organization

• Development


Focus on HOC first, then LOC.Whereas early cycles concentrate on finding

form, discovering the message, and clarifying ideas, later cycles focus on stylistic concerns. Yet even though each cycle may have a primary focus, experienced writers subordinate other concerns to it, keeping the whole in mind as they concentrate on the parts.

Teaching Through Rewriting


Written Comments

"The results of all these studies strongly suggest that teacher comment has little impact on

student writing." - George Hillocks from Research on Written Composition


Written Comments

Question: How do we make our comments effective and useful to our students?


Five Assumptions

1. Growth in writing is a highly individualistic process that occurs slowly, sometimes over a much longer period of time than we allow.


Five Assumptions

2. Through evaluatory comments and symbols teachers help to create an environment for writing. Establishing a climate of trust, in which students feel free to explore topics of interest to them without fear that their thoughts will be attacked, is essential.


Five Assumptions

3. Risk taking, trying new behaviors as one writes, and stretching one's use of language and toying with it are important for growth in writing. As writers break out of old, "safe" composing behaviors, they often make more mistakes until they become comfortable with new ways of using language. Teachers must encourage and support this kind of risk taking and mistake making.


Five Assumptions

4. Goal setting is also an important process in the development of students. Goals need to be concrete and within reach, and students need to see evidence of their progress. Teachers, then, should urge students to work toward a limited number of goals at a time.

Teaching Through RewritingFive Assumptions

5. Writing improvement does not occur in isolation because writing is related to speaking, listening, reading, and all other avenues of communication, including the experience of living. Prewriting activities, responding to texts, discussion, revisions, developing a sensitivity to self and others, experiences both in and out of the classroom affect growth in writing.


General Procedure - Written Comments

How do we take these assumptions and put them into practice?



1. Read the paper through without marking on it. Appreciate its message. Identify several elements that seem effective.



2. Identity a small number of problems. In deciding what to teach through comments this time, view the paper descriptively, not to judge it, but to discover what the text reveals about the decisions the writer made.



3. Formulate a tentative hypothesis to explain the problem you want to focus on. You can assume there's a logic to what appears of the page, even if it isn't your logic. Try to define that logic so that your comments can turn it around or modify it. Merely labeling the error doesn't teach students why and how your logic and theirs differs.



4. Examine what the student has done well. Can this evidence help the student solve a problem elsewhere in the paper? How can the student's strengths be used to repair weaknesses?



5. Now you are ready to begin commenting on the paper. You have examined the evidence, decided what to teach, and identified specific examples of the problem (and perhaps its solution) on which to base your lesson.



6. Questions can call attention to trouble spots, but avoid questions that prompt simple "yes" or "no" answers. Preface questions with why, how, or what so that students must reexamine the paper and become conscious critics of their own prose. Avoid imperatives which identify problems but don't help students learn how to solve them.



7. Avoid labeling problems unless you also give students a way of overcoming them. If something is "unclear" or "awkward," let students know the source of your confusion ("Do you mean...or...?"). Refer to sections of the paper that illustrate a strategy worth repeating ("You're using abstract words here; why not give me another example as you did in paragraph 2?")



8. Make praise work toward improvements. Students need to know how a reader responds to their work, but they're rarely fooled by token praise. Avoid "good" or "I like this" unless you add a noun ("Good sentence variety here") or because ("I like these details because they perfectly illustrate your idea.") Don't forget to commend students on progress they have made.



9. Avoid doing the student's work. Rewriting an occasional sentence can give students a model to imitate, if you make it clear what principle the model illustrates.



10. Write out a careful endnote to summarize your comments and to establish a goal for the next draft. Endnotes can follow a simple formula:



1. Devote at least one full sentence to commending what you can legitimately praise; avoid undercutting the praise with but.

2. Identify one or two problems and explain why they make the piece difficult to understand.

3. Set a goal for the student to work toward in the next draft.

4. Suggest specific strategies for reaching the goal ("In your next draft, do this...").



11. Write yourself a note to chart the student's progress. Use this note as a reminder when you look at the next draft of the paper.


ExampleYou've done a great job of incorporating your research

into you paper. Here is an example from your paper in which you did a very good job of doing this smoothly and fluidly:

Walden is, as Martin Bickman suggests, essentially "a book concerned with transitions, with passage."

You can use this example to help you effectively incorporate even more of your research into your next draft. Look at your research again and see if there are any more places where you can use that research as support for your own argument.


Example Just as I pointed out in your first draft, there are still

many sentences that are too long. I've marked many of them in your draft, but there are more that you should locate on your own. Here is an example from you paper:

"Emerson's view of nature is abstract and pure in spirit, like those European Romantic writers, he prefers seeing nature in the aspects of woods, streams, and morning breeze, afterglow rather than in the desolation wildness and danger side."


Example Sentences like these should be made into more than one

sentence or simply add a word which shows the proper relationship and connects the two sentences together (words like and, but, therefore, etc). For example we can add the phrase “in that” to the above sentence:

"Emerson's view of nature is abstract and pure in spirit like those European Romantic writers in that he prefers seeing nature in the aspects of woods, streams, and morning breeze, afterglow rather than in the desolation wildness and danger side."



The process seems a bit overwhelming at first, but after a few times, you begin to develop a repertoire of endnotes that you can quickly

and easily tailor to the specific paper.


Self Evaluation

1. How much time did you spend on this paper/draft?2. (After first evaluation) What did you try to improve,

or experiment with, on this paper? How successful were you? If you have questions about what you were trying to do, what are they?

3. What are the strengths of your paper? Place a check mark in the margin of those passages or paragraphs that you feel are very good.


Self Evaluation

4. What are the weaknesses, if any, of your paper? Place an X beside the passages or paragraphs you would like your teacher to correct or revise. Circle any punctuation, spelling, usage, etc., where you need help or clarification.

5. What one thing will you do to improve your next piece of writing? Or what kind of experimentation in writing would you like to try? If you would like some specific information related to what you want to do, write down your questions at the end of the paper.

6. What grade would you give yourself on this composition? Justify it.


Written Comments

Feel free to comment on their goals or suggest modifications

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lesson seven: revising

Education

rethinking rewriting

writing process

teaching process

rethinking rewriting

im writing

student writing

writing improvement

composing process