There Needs to be a Revision in Writing Education
According
to The Oxford Dictionary of Literary
Terms, revision in writing is defined as, “the process of amending an
earlier version, published or unpublished, of a work,” (Baldick). The
importance of a student revising his or her own piece of writing is commonly
taught in high school English classes. However, is this vital lesson actually
getting through to the students? Is there a further need to change the
education of revision to students so that they will be able to revise more
effectively? In the following study, I have examined a previous journal article
on students’ viewpoints of revision and compared it to data that I analyzed
from an interview that I conducted with a third year college student in an
attempt reveal an answer. Where previous studies have simply explored the processes
of student revision, due to the information I have gathered, I have found there
is necessity for a change in how revision is taught to high school students.
Literature Review
For
the 2007 edition of Written Communication,
Volume 24 Number 4, Debra Myhill and Susan wrote their article titled “More
Than Just Error Correction: Students’ Perspectives on Their Revision Processes
During Writing.” Composed after a two-year study on “students’ linguistic and compositional
process,” the article examines 34 students about their revision process through
interviews completed after the students wrote for an English class. What the researchers
had found was that most of the students believed revision was done after their
writing was completed and that they were not correcting surficial mistakes, but
were actually using several techniques to revise their writing as a whole
(Myhill, 3).
The article began with a literature review that explored previous articles that have been published in the past on related topics. (DR. CHANDLER, I ACTUALLY REALLY NEED HELP ON THIS SECTION. This article used so many studies to reference that I honestly don’t know how to break it down.) At the end of this section, Myhill and Jones find that while most research has been done on the revision of the actual writing and the end-product that results. However, their study focuses on the thought processes that occur while a student is in the action of writing. They feel that filling this gap will reveal connections between “cognitive research and instructional research” that could aid in the practice of teaching revision (Myhill, 8).
The “Method” section began with an explanation that this process was the second phase of a larger study involving a detailed linguistic analysis of writing from a sample of 360 students. The sample of 34 students observed and interviewed for this stage came from that previous primary group. All the 34 students came from four different secondary schools in England, had similar ethnicities, had diverse socioeconomic backgrounds, and were the ages of 14 to 16 (Myhill, 8). First, the students were observed as they wrote a classroom assignment selected by their teacher for a continuous fifteen minutes. Myhill and Jones observed the amount of time the students were writing and pausing, if they paused in the middle of writing a sentence or after they wrote a complete sentence, if they had crossed out something as they wrote, and the physical behavior that accompanied the writing, such as playing with a pen. Next, the students were interviewed in the classroom and this procedure involved the students talking about their composition processes and why they did certain things as they wrote. Each student was interviewed at least twice, while some were interviewed a third time. Then, the data gathered was analyzed using a program, called NVivo, which specializes in examining unstructured data. Finally, the researchers used that compiled information to go further and code all their material to effectively sort through it to find what was most useful to their study of revision (Myhill, 12).
In the “Findings” section, all the data was categorized into specific sections, divided by seven overall themes and elven overall codes that are all depicted in the following table from article.
The article began with a literature review that explored previous articles that have been published in the past on related topics. (DR. CHANDLER, I ACTUALLY REALLY NEED HELP ON THIS SECTION. This article used so many studies to reference that I honestly don’t know how to break it down.) At the end of this section, Myhill and Jones find that while most research has been done on the revision of the actual writing and the end-product that results. However, their study focuses on the thought processes that occur while a student is in the action of writing. They feel that filling this gap will reveal connections between “cognitive research and instructional research” that could aid in the practice of teaching revision (Myhill, 8).
The “Method” section began with an explanation that this process was the second phase of a larger study involving a detailed linguistic analysis of writing from a sample of 360 students. The sample of 34 students observed and interviewed for this stage came from that previous primary group. All the 34 students came from four different secondary schools in England, had similar ethnicities, had diverse socioeconomic backgrounds, and were the ages of 14 to 16 (Myhill, 8). First, the students were observed as they wrote a classroom assignment selected by their teacher for a continuous fifteen minutes. Myhill and Jones observed the amount of time the students were writing and pausing, if they paused in the middle of writing a sentence or after they wrote a complete sentence, if they had crossed out something as they wrote, and the physical behavior that accompanied the writing, such as playing with a pen. Next, the students were interviewed in the classroom and this procedure involved the students talking about their composition processes and why they did certain things as they wrote. Each student was interviewed at least twice, while some were interviewed a third time. Then, the data gathered was analyzed using a program, called NVivo, which specializes in examining unstructured data. Finally, the researchers used that compiled information to go further and code all their material to effectively sort through it to find what was most useful to their study of revision (Myhill, 12).
In the “Findings” section, all the data was categorized into specific sections, divided by seven overall themes and elven overall codes that are all depicted in the following table from article.
Taking into account all
the material, Myhill and Jones then elaborated on the themes and codes that
were mentioned by the students the most. First, they had a subheading titled, No
Revision During Writing, in which they noted how many students did not revise
at all until they had completed writing, over 2/3 of the sample. Adding to
that, they placed comments from the interviews that correlated with this
premise. For example, one student said, “It’s all a bit jumbled, and it’s just
my thoughts coming out on to the paper first. I wanted to get down as much as
possible before I change it,” (Myhill, 12-14). Second there was another
subheading that read, “Rereading as a revision strategy,” which the researchers
explained how the students used rereading to revise their papers. Some students
looked at their writing as a whole, while others considered the errors in each
sentence, one by one (Myhill, 14-15). The third subheading was titled, “The Nature
of Revision Activities,” and was broken down into even further subdivisions,
which will be explained as they appeared in the article. The first section was
Revising for accuracy. In this section, Myhill and Jones explore how students
would look for and correct mistakes of the grammar and spelling sort. The
second section was “Revising for coherence,” in which the students made sure if
their writing made sense. The third section was about how and what students
added to their writing as they revised and was titled, “Revising to add to the
text.” The fourth subdivision was called “Revision to avoid repetition” and
involved the students looking over their work to check if they repeated ideas
or sounded repetitive. The final subdivision was “Revising to achieve general
improvement,” and was about if the students themselves were satisfied with
their overall work and how they would change it if they weren’t. (Myhill, 15-19).
The last section of the article was titled “Discussion.” This was the part where the researchers Debra Myhill and Susan Jones provided a conclusion for their entire study. First, they explain the focus of their study, students’ perspectives of their own writing and revision process, and how they intend to expand on it in the future, in a second article that will be a case study of one classroom. Second, they describe how most writers revise their works by looking at their writing overall and they refer back to some of the studies that they cited in their literature review that adhere to what their study had shown. For instance, they referred to how Allal said writing was a “post-textual production.” Third, contrastingly, they showed how their data contradicted with some of the research they had previously cited. For example, Hayes said that students primarily revise to simply fix surficial errors, while Myhill and Jones found that majority of the students revised for a plethora of reasons. Next, the researchers expound on how the students’ comments were the primary vehicle for understanding how their minds worked as they revised. Lastly, they concluded their study by three possible effects on education that their research had. One, that students should be taught to revise at every step in the writing process, not just after they have completed a piece of writing. Two, there needs to be more understanding of the self-thought that goes on as a student writes, not only for the teacher’s sake, but the students too. Thirdly, by fixing the errors in education and reviewing more of the metacognitive processes that go on, there could be a link to better solving students’ “dissatisfaction problems” with their own writing (Myhill, 19-21).
Though this article dove deep into the opinions of revision in students, I conducted my research differently. First, where Myhill and Jones interviewed multiple secondary school students from England, I interviewed one college student from the United States. In addition, while I support their thoughts on a change in writing education, I want to use my data to show how their hypothesis is supported. Finally, in my study, my primary mode of considering will be through discourse analysis.
The last section of the article was titled “Discussion.” This was the part where the researchers Debra Myhill and Susan Jones provided a conclusion for their entire study. First, they explain the focus of their study, students’ perspectives of their own writing and revision process, and how they intend to expand on it in the future, in a second article that will be a case study of one classroom. Second, they describe how most writers revise their works by looking at their writing overall and they refer back to some of the studies that they cited in their literature review that adhere to what their study had shown. For instance, they referred to how Allal said writing was a “post-textual production.” Third, contrastingly, they showed how their data contradicted with some of the research they had previously cited. For example, Hayes said that students primarily revise to simply fix surficial errors, while Myhill and Jones found that majority of the students revised for a plethora of reasons. Next, the researchers expound on how the students’ comments were the primary vehicle for understanding how their minds worked as they revised. Lastly, they concluded their study by three possible effects on education that their research had. One, that students should be taught to revise at every step in the writing process, not just after they have completed a piece of writing. Two, there needs to be more understanding of the self-thought that goes on as a student writes, not only for the teacher’s sake, but the students too. Thirdly, by fixing the errors in education and reviewing more of the metacognitive processes that go on, there could be a link to better solving students’ “dissatisfaction problems” with their own writing (Myhill, 19-21).
Though this article dove deep into the opinions of revision in students, I conducted my research differently. First, where Myhill and Jones interviewed multiple secondary school students from England, I interviewed one college student from the United States. In addition, while I support their thoughts on a change in writing education, I want to use my data to show how their hypothesis is supported. Finally, in my study, my primary mode of considering will be through discourse analysis.
Work Cited
Baldick, Chris. "revision." The Oxford
Dictionary of Literary Terms. : Oxford University Press, 2008. Oxford
Reference. 2008. Date Accessed 12 Apr. 2014
<http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780199208272.001.0001/acref-9780199208272-e-975>.
Myhill, D., and S. Jones. "More Than Just Error
Correction: Students' Perspectives on Their Revision Processes During
Writing." Written Communication 24.4 (2007): 323-43. Print.
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