In Response to Nancy Sommers’ “Revision Strategies of Student Writers and Experienced Adult Writers”
I had actually read this article before in my teaching composition class last semester so this was a nice refresher of Sommers’ views on revision. One of the most interesting parts of the article, in my opinion, is found on page 383 at the bottom of the second paragraph, Sommer says, “At best the students see their writing altogether passively through eyes of former teachers or their surrogates…” This sentence has been haunting me since I read the article; it our fault as teachers that students stop writing for themselves and start writing for the us (the teacher). This makes me so sad because it is totally true! How can we change our student’s concepts of their writing, it’s as if we will have to fight against every other teacher our students have ever had.
I love how one of the experienced writers say that revising is an ongoing process that could go on forever. I have my BS in English Ed and it took me three advanced writing classes to figure out this concept. How do we get our students to make this ah ha moment if it took me forever?
Beautiful Autumn
5 months ago
Identifying leads that come out of a piece for another piece made me realize how very much we put into one piece. I also experienced how the language of one piece drew me into attempting the piece in a different format. Both opened up so many more possibilities than I saw in the first piece of writing.
ReplyDeleteIt took me a long time also. It was this article, Atwell, and a couple of really good workshops people did on revision for me to get it. We all keep learning how to fine tune the art. That is what is so exciting about teaching. Even after more than thirty years, I still learn new ideas all the time.
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