Revision as an Opportunity for Growth

Hi everyone, 

As my class starts to read Concept 4, All Writers Have More to Learn, from Linda-Kassner and Elizabeth Wardle's book of collected essays, Naming What We Know: Threshold Concept of Writing Studies, I have been thinking more about revision, and how I want to implement revision in my classes. 

Theory

First, my perspective on revision largely comes from a creative writing background. My teachers in undergrad hammered in on the importance of revision, and how they themselves would write and rewrite a project until they lost track of how many drafts they created. Not only did this focus on revision help me improve my writing, it helped ease the anxiety I felt that my draft had to be perfect on the first try. 

Perfectionism is a common pitfall I see students fall into while tutoring at my university's Writing Center. Often, students come into the Writing Center with the assignment guidelines and an idea with an outline, but have no idea how to put words onto the page. I believe a lot of this anxiety comes from students believing their first draft has to be their last, forgetting that writing is a series of processes, and that "successful writers aren't those who are simply able to write brilliant first drafts; often, the writing we encounter has been heavily revised and edited and is sometimes the result of a great deal of failure," (Adler-Kassner and Wardle 62). 

In order for students to improve their writing ability and be prepared for their academic and professional careers, I think it is important to stress that there is no final destination when trying to improve one's writing, and that the only way one can improve is through continuous practice and revision. As Shirley Rose states, "Habits such as writing multiple drafts or setting aside regular, frequent periods for writing in a place free of distractions often prove effective regardless of the writing task or context," (Adler-Kassner and Wardle 60)

Practice

I think the importance of practice and revision can be stressed in a variety of ways. In the ENGL 1102 course I am currently shadowing, students are in the process of finishing and submitting their Exploratory Bibliography. Last week, my mentor required students to bring a rough draft of their bibliography, peer review it in class, and then create a detailed list of changes they need to make before submission. This was then followed by another round of peer-view, where students submitted a new, revised draft outside of class, ensuring that each student's received ample feedback and revised their bibliography at least two times before submission.  In addition to completing the two peer-review sessions for an in-class participation grade, they were encouraged to go to the Writing Center to receive extra credit. I think this scaffolding of peer-review and revision did a great job at ensuring students knew what my mentor was looking for and teaching them the importance of peer-review and revision. 

I want to do something similar when I start teaching FYC courses in the fall. Before every major assignment, I want to require students to submit a rough draft, that way I can see what areas students are doing well in and where they might need additional instruction. I also want to implement peer-review, as I think it could be beneficial for students to get feedback on their own draft, as well as look at other students' work with a critical lens to hopefully better understand what it is I am looking for. 

Finally, to really stress the importance of revision and that no piece of writing is ever truly perfect, I am thinking of incorporating a final, where students revise one of their major assignments and improve it by incorporating some of the material they learned after that assignment was submitted. I think it could also be an interesting idea to have students revise an assignment and changing its modality. For instance, the majority of my assignments will like be essays, but for this end-of-semester assignment, students will be asked to transform their papers into a powerpoint or a speech. 

While thinking of how I want to implement revision into my FYC course, I have found a lot of great resources from other instructors, like Dr. Jenna Cooper's blog and Jayne E. O. Stone's study, both of which highlight how revision can be better scaffolded into FYC courses. I think by better implementing revision into FYC courses, students will face less anxiety when beginning an assignment and better understand that writing is always improving. 

Works Cited

Adler-Kassner, Linda and Elizabeth Wardle. Naming What We Know: Threshold Concepts of Writing Studies, Utah State University Press, 2015, pp. 59-70. 

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