Improving My Writing Skills Essay

Murray (1917-2006) was a scholar, journalist, and author among many other things. Murray wrote the essay “The Maker’s Eye: Revising your own Manuscript”, which was published in a magazine called The Writer. “The Maker’s Eye” explains why it is beneficial to revise no matter if you are a beginner or experienced. “As a word is changed, cut, or added, as a construction is rearranged, all the words used before that moment and all those that follow that moment must be considered and reconsidered.” This means when you changed any word in your writing that is the time to look at previously written words, but also consider the new words you are

To approach writing, Elbow explains that “…Writing calls on two skills that are so different that they usually conflict with each other: creating and criticizing.” (7) That means writing requires the ability to come up with ideas yourself and also the ability to criticize and refine

By examining the ideas in the essays Freewriting by Peter Elbow and The Makers Eye: Revising your own manuscripts by Donald Murray. One can gain a better understanding of the process of turning a piece of writing from an inspiration into a craft. By examining the elements lined out in each essay can be beneficial in creating a piece of writing that is beyond a college or student level. Elbows essay lines out the importance of a strong prewriting regimen. That editing too early can ruin writing. He believes that by using the method of free writing, it can inspire ideas that may be limited when worrying about grammar. While Murray emphasizes the necessity to create many drafts to form writing into its full potential. Saying each draft is an opportunity to discover what the author has to say and they the best way to say it. By transforming writing into its maximum potential it goes from being an idea an inspiration a masterpiece.

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

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.

In “Revising”, an excerpt from his book Rewriting published in 2006, Joseph Harris, a University of Delaware English professor, highlights common misinformation about revision, pointing to the popular media depiction of “one-draft” writers. In actuality revision is a vital process of “rethinking, refining, and developing [a] work in progress”, which differs from editing by locality(452). That is, editing carries little impact on surrounding prose, while revision leads to global changes .To better explain, Harris identifies four aspects of the revising process: Coming to Terms, Forwarding, Countering, and Taking an Approach. Ultimately, Harris hopes to provide a clear process in which readers build upon compositional strengths, consider topic

Once a writer has completed the writing portion of an essay, it is often considered to be done. However, no one, even a professional writer, writes a perfect draft on the first attempt; in fact, it is often this revision stage of writing where a good writer separates himself from other, less experienced writers. A good writer understands the importance of revision and spends as much time as possible during this stage to craft the essay into the ideal state. Moreover, what exactly revision is? Revision refers to the changes that occur in an essay once

Revising has never really been my strongest point when it comes to writing papers. Usually when I would write papers whether it would be in high school or even for myself I would just turn it in the way it was and not even attempt to revise the paper and would get good grades on them. Even if I would revise them then all I would check is the word placement and commas to see if they all were correct and then turn it in for the final grading and I would always get a high grade on the paper. This year I really had to learn to revise better and I

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

In the article Teaching Writing as a Process Not Product by Donald M. Murray, Murray argues that writing is a process of discovery not an end product. Rather than being criticized for a “perfect product” by the teachers, student should be provided with an environment of creativity to explore and discover. Murray states that many teachers focus on the end product rather than teaching students the process of writing in order to receive a better product. The writing process has three stages of writing which include: prewriting, writing, and rewriting. In the prewriting stage, students should take about 85% of their time dedicated to the writing process. Prewriting includes strategies such as daydreaming, note taking, outlining, and lead-writing. Next is the writing stage where it should take about one percent of a student’s time. The writing stage is where students produce their first draft. Finally, it is the

In Joseph Harris’s chapter “Revising” which was originally published in his book, Rewriting: How to Do Things with Texts in 2006, Harris emphasizes the importance of the revising process, how to revise and improve effectively, and informs us about the fact that revising is overlooked and rushed by writers today. He shares tips on how to effectively revise and demonstrates using excerpts within his chapters.

I finally figured out why, Writing the same paper for the second time while staring at the first draft comes out better than the last. For years I’ve done this and never considered it to be a method writers use to better themselves. Donald M. Murray defines this writing as revision where the author continuously edits his or her words to clarify their purpose. We all can put words on paper, but true writing comes with placing the right words at the right time, that says exactly what you want to say. Within Murray’s “The Maker’s Eye,” which goes in depth about revising, He mentions a final product mentality to holds academic writer back. Readers are always shown a polished version of the words on paper, and transitively assume that was a first draft creation. Murray introduced lots of new ideas to me about ways of approaching revision, and how it truly should take.

This fall semester in ESL 91has been pretty interesting, and so far successful. The main object of this semester was to improve our essay writing. We were taught various lab techniques that helped us to improve our English writing skills, such as using appropriate verb tense and how to write a research paper with a works cited. Through my work on the research paper I have learned how to write in an academic style, how to find appropriate sources from an academic database, and how to cite my sources. Most of all, I can say that my reading skills have improved because the research for our papers required me to do a lot of critical reading.

Revising and rewriting a paper is a common step in the writing process. Personally, I think your paper would be crap if you skipped these steps but I'm sure someone has done it before. Every writer has revised and rewritten a paper. Do you think that Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet in one shot? I don't think so.

My overall experience taking ENGL 1100 has a wonderful. I have learned allot about my writing skills. I can say that my greatest weakness always have been writing essays. When I was reading the Syllabus I was overwhelmed with the amount of work the class had, and a little scared. Every week discussion, assignments, and 4 essays had to be completed during the semester. I am going to write on my reflection what were weak and my area of strengths.