Analytical Skills Revision

Furthermore, according to Duncan Carter’s article, Five Myths About Writing, “Years of well-intentioned English teachers have responded to students’ first drafts as if they were supposed to have been perfect. Combined with a pedagogy which suggests that revision is a form of punishment, it is not hard to see where students get the idea that good writers don’t have to revise” (Carter, 82). Growing up, high school teachers make it seem as if revising and editing your paper is the worst thing ever. Any student who worked long and hard on their assignment and turned it in to get revised, would hate to receive a paper back with nothing but red marks and errors written all over them. This initially gave people the mindset of forgetting about editing their work if all it did was tear them down and point out their mistakes.

In his article "Coming to Terms", Joseph Harris takes the opportunity to share his knowledge with his readers and discuss things to keep in mind when drafting, revising, and editing assignments. In this specific chapter, Harris explains the revision process and suggest possible preliminary steps to take when formulating an essay. He emphasizes revision as a knowledge practice, in which there is a consistent set of questions you can ask yourself at any point while working on a draft (page 99). In addition, Harris refers the term "writer's project" throughout the section.

The comparison of revising to sculpting relates to how I view my revision process to be. I like to make my rough draft as complete as I can and then go back to fix little things for my revision. This is like the sculpting metaphor because in sculpting you start with something as whole, like me making my rough draft as complete as it can be, then you go back and keep working on it until you have ended up with what you were looking for, in this case a sculpture or a complete paper. I find this way of revision to be beneficial because I think it is always best to get everything down the first time so you and your peers have more to work with later on and

Revising a paper literally means to “renew again”, to look for something fresh in critical perspective. Revision is an ongoing process of rethinking the paper: reconsidering the arguments, reviewing the evidence, refining the purpose, reorganizing the presentation, reviving the paper’s perspective. At first, I thought revision was just fixing commas, grammar and spelling, but no, fixing minor errors like grammar, spelling and punctuation are called, proofreading. Proofreading is an important step before turning in a paper, but if the ideas are predictable, the thesis is weak, and the organization of the paper is a mess, then proofreading will just act like a band aid to cover the little scars on the paper. Writing is a process of discovery, and writers don’t always produce the best stuff from the first draft they made. So revision is a chance to look at the paper once again and to analyze critically what a writer has written.

I have been a San Jose State University student for 4 years now, and over the course of my learning I have grown and learned more than I thought possible. I came to SJSU knowing that English was my least favorite subject; I consistently dreaded writing assignments professors would assign in class. Going through English 1B has taught me to face my fears about writing papers, whether they are short reviews or extensive research papers, I have become more comfortable in writing. I have learned how to write and express myself, how to think for myself, and how to find the answers to the things I don’t know. Most importantly I have learned that revision is essential.

In Nancy Sommers’ article, “Revision Strategies of Student Writers and Experienced Adult Writers”, she addresses how to different groups, students and experienced writers, go about revising their paper. Sommers method of taking the results of her experience could have been much more effective if she would have added details about certain thing. How did the group’s final papers turn out? Where there significant difference in the final papers, and if so what were they. Did both group turn up with nicely written papers? These questions would have helped to understand the importance of revision toward the creation of the paper, then just the revision stage itself. Sommers mention of how most students repeat themselves in their writings by just

At the start of this course, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I had a goal for myself to improve and learn skills that would make writing less daunting for me. I have learned so many things about my writing that I didn’t think much about before. Another goal I had was to break the cookie-cutter mold that was set upon me throughout high school. During the process of revision, I discovered many things about myself as a writer and techniques that have been effective for me in the writing process.

That being said, other times you learn just as much from revising your work as you did from completing the initial assignment. Refining my rhetorical analysis was indeed an experience of both – troublesome and rewarding. Since my academic voice is somewhat similar to when I began this class, I decided to simply move and alter bits and pieces of the text. The biggest change was correcting the many instances where I use the wording “the audience,” rather than the actual, specific target audience of the paper. This helped me implement much better usage of my understanding of the rhetorical triangle. Adjusting wording and phrasing also bettered the

It allows you to be free with your writing, knowing your writing will never be criticized. Writing has a distinct advantage to speaking, writing allows more editing than speaking, but that is it’s downfall as well. Premature editing takes the voice out of your work, and adds an unnecessary element of pressure. The author urges us to next time you right, notice how many times you stop to correct your mistakes. Editing your mistakes makes writing very hard, slow, and tedious, and takes the voice right out of your

Have you ever given much thought about revising your paper? We correct the spelling, fix the grammatical errors, and give it one last read through then we hand it in. Revision is one of the most important pieces when writing an essay, but do we overlook it? I most certainly did until I read Barbra Tomlinson’s essay, “Tuning, Tying, and Training Texts: Metaphors for Revision”. Tomlinson opened my eyes and I see a whole new light when it comes to revising my papers.

Typically, when most people think about the writing process they think of terms such as a ‘thesis statement,’ developing an outline, body paragraphs, conclusion; it’s imperative to view writing this way. We have only been taught THIS way of writing almost directly after we learned how to spell words—you decide what to write about, usually specified in the thesis statement, then you write a series of paragraphs entailing how you came to this conclusion. Finally, you conclude your paper by restating exactly what it was you spent an entire essay writing about. And most people will go their entire lives believing that is the formula for an effective, well thought-out work of literature. But how often do we go back and read through our writing and completely resent how amateur and forced it sounds? This is usually a direct result of a lack of revision within a work. Defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary as “a change or a set of changes that corrects or improves something” and “a new version of something that has been corrected or changed,” Revision is not a common word we think of when writing—this raises a serious question: how should you revise? In response to this to this, research was conducted to find a general view as to the significance of revision within various individual’s writing processes. These results, along with research from several academic articles provide a clear description as to where revision could be

Sommers explains to the reader the mindset of revision in the eyes of college freshman vs. experienced writers. Based on her research she was able to establish that the term “revision” has two drastic meanings when it comes to experienced vs. inexperienced writers. The college freshmen referred to revision as simply rewording the preexisting writing in their first draft. Sommers explains that the “scale of concern” for the college students was “deletion, substitution, addition, and rewording.” (380) In contrast, the experienced writers had a very different mindset when it came to their revision process. They explained when revising they focused on finding “shape” and “form” to their writing. To further explain, they do not have simply one rough daft that becomes a final draft, but rather they have numerous drafts that they continuously dig through to develop “structural patterns.” (384) In comparison to the college freshmen their revision process isn’t just rewording, it’s continuously reframing each draft. Through this research Sommers explains to the reader the way revisions should be, and the areas that people lack with misconceptions that the word “revising” simply means rewording but in Sommers’ opinion it’s a total revamping

The writing process is very important because it could help create a great paper. There are five steps in the writing process ,and they are pre writing, writing, revision, editing , and publishing. I think the most important part of the writing process is editing because it focus on grammar , organization, sentence structure. Editing can catch a lot of mistakes that could cause a failing grade on an assignment. I can use this writing process in the future by reading over my paper, and fixing the mistakes in my

The two words fell under the category of proof reading papers. This course helped me to recognize the differences between revising and editing. Revision is changes made at the macro level that include deleting words and phrases, moving paragraphs and sentences and add clarifying information Editing is done at the sentence level, including grammar. During my first draft, my paper was unorganized and jumped from pros and cons to causes and effects. I had to sit and restructure my paper to create a sense of flow and organization. Next, I looked into my individual sentence structure in which I had to reword some awkward phrasing and add punctuation that I had skipped. The entire process was aided by reviews. Allowing others to read my works, tremendously improved my paper. Getting feedback allowed me to understand my reader’s point of view. For my final portfolio, I did one last revision and editing. I reread all the comments my instructor and peers had written on my papers and ended up removing an entire paragraph and replacing it with information that was more relevant and crucial to my

From taking this course I have been able to improve many of my weaknesses, but there are still some that I need to work on. Overall I am becoming better at not procrastinating as much as I used to. This class has helped me to learn to take the little steps along the way because then there will not be as much work to do towards the end. This has also made me realize that the final product of my writing will turn out better because it will have had more time to develop, which means that there would have been more opportunities to proofread. I think by learning many styles of writing, such as paraphrasing, summarizing, analyzing, and researching; it has enabled me to be able to write more broadly. By knowing how to correctly use all of these kinds of writing styles, it will help me in the future for other classes because I will have the knowledge that I need to write these types of papers. I still procrastinate sometimes, but not as much as I used to. I will be able to improve on this as time goes along because I will become more motivated by seeing the end result, which usually would be better grades.