Robin Murray, Director of Composition

Composition scholars have for some time stressed the importance of revision in the writing process. Faculty teaching writing-centered and writing-intensive courses often wonder how to approach revision in a manner that would allow students to gain the most benefit. The following heuristic, devised by Professor Robin Murray, Director of Composition, should prove to be very useful. Section A provides questions for faculty self-reflection concerning revision. Section B offers many practical suggestions for handling the revision paperload.

A. How is revision already integrated into writing intensive classes and faculty scholarship?

1. What steps do you as a faculty member take when revising your own work for publication?What kinds of writing are your students doing in your classes?
2. How does class size impact the kind of writing your students are doing?
3. How do you, as an instructor, facilitate your students’ revision processes?
4. What actual interventions do you implement?
5. What do you see as the positive aspects of your methods of integrating revision into your classes?
6. What problems do you have with your current methods of integrating revision into your classes?
7. If you have problems, in what ways might you correct them?

1. Consider roles the instructor takes at various stages of the writing process.
2. Consider how peers in class and writing center tutors might contribute to revision implementation.
3. Discuss ways to respond to student drafts at various stages of the writing process.

a. Conferencing techniques


1. In-class mini-conferences. Make sure students prepare questions in advance related to their papers, so you can tackle those quickly. Authority remains with student; faculty at this stage need not actually read student essays but allow students space to talk about them and any problems they may be having.
2. Out-of-class conferences. There are many ways to implement conferences with students. Early in the writing process, the faculty may follow the process outlined for mini-conferences. Later in the process, when the student has a draft in hand, faculty may address global issues like organization, development, and audience awareness. If the student has already revised the work for content, the faculty member may address editing and proofreading problems related to sentence structure, word choice, and grammar/usage/mechanics. In this case, students may either turn in papers in advance, so faculty can quickly read them (without writing comments), or read papers to faculty during an actual conference session.


b. Written responses: Again, the stage of the writing process in which the paper is situated will define the type of responses faculty should include. Here are a couple of rules of thumb:


1. If instructors are responding to early drafts, comments should address content issues like whether or not the paper responds to the actual assignment, whether or not the paper has a focus, whether or not an organization strategy is in place, how the ideas in the paper might be developed more fully, etc.
2. One thing instructors should avoid early in the writing process is giving students contradictory messages in their comments. For example, if an instructor asks a student to develop and clarify certain ideas in specific parts of an essay, he or she should not, in the same parts of that essay, tell students to correct punctuation or spelling problems. Since the student will need to change sentences completely to make the necessary global changes suggested, asking him or her to correct sentences already in place will confuse them and, perhaps, entice them to change only the punctuation and spelling rather than to address content issues.
3. Comments, too, should respond specifically to that particular paper and should not take on a “rubber stamp” appearance. For example, writing comments like “develop your ideas” or “awkward” will give the student little information about how to address problems in his or her particular paper. Instead, ask the student questions related specifically to his or her paper’s ideas.