There Needs to
be a Revision in How Revision is Taught to Students
According to researchers Debra
Myhill and Susan Jones, “Theoretical conceptualizations of the revision process
recognize that revision is a complex process that occurs at every stage of the
writing process and that it is not merely a posttextual production activity.”
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? I have reviewed the findings by Myhill and Jones in their article
titled “More Than Just Error Correction: Students’ Perspectives on Their
Revision Processes During Writing,” which is about students’ viewpoints of their
own revision techniques. Where previous studies have simply explored the
processes of student revision, due to the information I have gathered, I will
emphasize the need for an alteration in the way revision is taught to students.
Myhill and Jones interviewed multiple secondary school students from England,
while I interviewed one college student from the United States. Moreover, in my
study, my primary mode of investigation will be discourse analysis, where
unlike most of the writing studies articles, I will take into account the cultural
influences and values that my subject possesses that affect her answers.
Lastly, while I support their thoughts on a change in writing education, I want
to use my data to show how their hypothesis is supported.
Literature Review
Debra Myhill and Susan Jones wrote an
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 piece examines 34
students and their revision processes through interviews completed after the
students wrote an assignment during 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 merely correcting surficial mistakes, but
were actually using several techniques to revise their writing as a whole
(Myhill, 3).
Following a brief review of previous studies, 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 collection of 360 students. The sample of 34 students observed and interviewed for this stage came from that previous group. All of the students came from four different secondary schools in England, had similar ethnicities, had diverse socioeconomic backgrounds, and were between the ages of 14 to 16. During the study, the students were first observed as they wrote a classroom assignment and Myhill and Jones observed the behavior of the students, such as when they were writing, pausing, and crossing words out. 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. In the “Findings” section, all the data was categorized into specific sections, divided by seven overall themes and eleven overall codes that all involved the way students revised.
Furthermore, the last section of the article was titled “Discussion.” This was the part where the researchers provided a conclusion for their entire study. First, they explained 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. Second, they described how most writers revise their work 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 that people wrongly believe that writing was a “post-textual production,” just as the students did, even though that was not the case. Third, they showed how their data contradicted with some of the research they had 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 expounded 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.
Following a brief review of previous studies, 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 collection of 360 students. The sample of 34 students observed and interviewed for this stage came from that previous group. All of the students came from four different secondary schools in England, had similar ethnicities, had diverse socioeconomic backgrounds, and were between the ages of 14 to 16. During the study, the students were first observed as they wrote a classroom assignment and Myhill and Jones observed the behavior of the students, such as when they were writing, pausing, and crossing words out. 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. In the “Findings” section, all the data was categorized into specific sections, divided by seven overall themes and eleven overall codes that all involved the way students revised.
Furthermore, the last section of the article was titled “Discussion.” This was the part where the researchers provided a conclusion for their entire study. First, they explained 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. Second, they described how most writers revise their work 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 that people wrongly believe that writing was a “post-textual production,” just as the students did, even though that was not the case. Third, they showed how their data contradicted with some of the research they had 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 expounded 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.
Methods
The first procedure for collecting
data for this study was a face-to-face interview with my subject, who from this
point forward shall be referred to as A. She is a twenty year old woman who is
currently studying Psychiatric Rehabilitation at a four-year university in New
Jersey. A was specifically chosen due to her second semester sophomore
education level and for her ample amount of college writing experience, as she
often writes papers for classes while pursuing her degree.
The interview was conducted in the location of A’s choosing: her favorite local Barnes and Noble store, in a back corner where she enjoys reading in hidden solitude. The questions I asked were based around revision and her experience with it through her high school years and college up to this point and in multiple classroom subjects and genres. As we spoke, I recorded the interview on my Smartphone and the entire recording amounted to roughly twenty-one minutes.
The next process was reviewing the audio recording and transcribing the entire interview on a Microsoft Word document. In the transcription, I referred to myself as H, and as stated previously, my subject was labelled as A. The whole document was nine pages single-spaced. From there, I read over the transcript multiple times and selected excerpts that best developed my study’s focus. I chose points in which the teaching of revision was discussed. For example, while A explained when she learned revision, her definition of revision is evidence of what she actually retained. The excerpts were meant to provide a full view of my subject’s experience with being taught and learning revision. Next, using discourse analysis, I analyzed the data points that I had selected. The following section contains my findings and analysis of them.
The interview was conducted in the location of A’s choosing: her favorite local Barnes and Noble store, in a back corner where she enjoys reading in hidden solitude. The questions I asked were based around revision and her experience with it through her high school years and college up to this point and in multiple classroom subjects and genres. As we spoke, I recorded the interview on my Smartphone and the entire recording amounted to roughly twenty-one minutes.
The next process was reviewing the audio recording and transcribing the entire interview on a Microsoft Word document. In the transcription, I referred to myself as H, and as stated previously, my subject was labelled as A. The whole document was nine pages single-spaced. From there, I read over the transcript multiple times and selected excerpts that best developed my study’s focus. I chose points in which the teaching of revision was discussed. For example, while A explained when she learned revision, her definition of revision is evidence of what she actually retained. The excerpts were meant to provide a full view of my subject’s experience with being taught and learning revision. Next, using discourse analysis, I analyzed the data points that I had selected. The following section contains my findings and analysis of them.
Data and Discussion
Just as revision is a practice that
happens all throughout the writing process, analyzing the data I collected also
ended up being a trial and error process of exploration as I dug further and further
into my transcript. Ultimately, the interview yielded surprising results.
Before I talked with A, I had a completely different focus for this study;
however, after our interview, I knew my focus was clear. Due to the ways that A
described revision and the need that she felt for revision to be taught earlier
in her education, I now feel there is a need to change the way revision is
taught to students.
To begin, Excerpt 1 is about how A defined revision. Revision means different things to different people, so I felt it was vital to know how A defined the term.
To begin, Excerpt 1 is about how A defined revision. Revision means different things to different people, so I felt it was vital to know how A defined the term.
Excerpt 1: Revision
Means to Fixing it Up to What it Need to Be
H – // Um, how would you define
revision in your own words?
A – Hmmm, if I had to define
revision, I would say that revision could be, um, looking at all the mistakes
of your paper, whether they be like spelling, grammatical, or anything else and
making sure that they are all corrected and like how they need to be. Like as I
made the analogy before, like it’s kinda like putting make-up on your paper.
Like you’re fixing up every little correction and just making it the best it
can be. Yep.
In her answer, A feels that
revision is finding all the mistakes and “fixing” them to how they “need to
be”. She also refers to a comparison that she had made earlier in the interview
in which A said, "I revise people’s papers and like I think it’s kind of
exciting to do because your paper in general could be really good, but like
you’re kind of just adding make-up to it to make sure that it’s perfect."
In this excerpt, she likened revising her writing to putting on make-up, in
which you correct every flaw and “make it the best it can be.” What is
interesting is that she does not specify what her “fixing up” up entails. She
does not elaborate on if she looks at her audience, purpose, organization, or
even lexicon. All she mentions is that she finds the mistakes in spelling and
grammar, yet her explanation alludes to more. In addition, A does not explain
the requirements of what a piece of writing “needs to be.” She uses much vague
language and generalizations. That omission of detail can mean that A was not
taught the proper terminology for revision. This finding leads to the second
topic, in which A makes a notable inconsistency.
In Excerpts 2 and 3, I ask A about
when she was first taught revision and how she was taught in high school.
Through her answers to these two questions, A contradicts herself.
Excerpt 2 & 3:
Self-Contradiction
Excerpt 2: First Learned
Revision in College
H – (Laughter) Um, so when did you
first like learn about revision?
A – Honestly, this is gonna be really
embarrassing, but like in high school, I never revised any of my stuff. I kinda
just handed it in and I didn’t care. Um, my freshman year of college I learned
my revision and like taking the time to actually go print things out and relook
at it over again. Freshman year of college (Laughter) That’s sad.
Excerpt 3: Revision
Taught in High School
H – Okay, um. How did your high
school English teacher tell you to revise?
A – Um, it depends on the one that
you—what I was talking about because like every single year each one would be
of a different kind of intensity. But my senior year, my um AP like College
Writing teacher, who was like English teacher technically, she taught us to do
the same thing like that I learned my freshman year of college, but I didn’t
listen. She told me to also, like print out a couple of times, look it over, like
go talk to my parents about it. Like read it out to them and stuff, but that’s
all they really went into detail.
In Excerpt 2, A talks about how she
didn't learn revision until her freshman year of college and how she finds that
to be "sad," as in a shame. She also says how “embarrassing” it is
that in high school she never revised her work and simply handed it in because
she didn't care. This plays on the cultural story that high school students
aren't serious about schoolwork. In addition, she reveals a bit of her revision
process by explaining how her college professor taught her to "print
things out and relook at it over again." What is contradictory is in a
later question.
When I ask her about learning revision in high school, A admits that she was "taught" it, but that she “didn’t listen.” However, when she eventually did learn to revise in college, she used the word "learn." The deliberate use of these two different words for something that seemingly means the same thing expresses the exact opposite--they are two different words for a reason. A may have been taught to revise by a teacher in high school; however, she did not learn it herself until college. Not only does it make a high point in my data, but it also raises questions. Was it the way A was taught revision in high school that was wrong or perhaps she was not serious about schoolwork in high school to retain the knowledge? It is possible that when she enrolled in college, she became more of a responsible student and followed everything the professors told her. Despite A taking the blame, by confessing that she did not listen, I believe the cause of her lack of proper revision education until college to be different. I feel that her high school teacher did not explain revision as clearly as her college professor did. Whether it is because of the former or latter, both causes would result the same effect.
Even if A was careless about her education in high school, lessons about revision should capture the students’ attention so that they will care about what they are learning. Yet, if the college professor explained the process in a more understandable way, then again, high school education of revision in writing has to change. Although at the time of asking these questions, I did not know this was where my interview would take my focus, A stepped in and introduced the new topic that I had not even thought of towards the end of our talking.
At the conclusion of the interview, I had asked A if there was anything about revision that we had not talked above that she felt important to mention. Although I was expecting her to say no, she declared the need to teach revision at an earlier education level.
When I ask her about learning revision in high school, A admits that she was "taught" it, but that she “didn’t listen.” However, when she eventually did learn to revise in college, she used the word "learn." The deliberate use of these two different words for something that seemingly means the same thing expresses the exact opposite--they are two different words for a reason. A may have been taught to revise by a teacher in high school; however, she did not learn it herself until college. Not only does it make a high point in my data, but it also raises questions. Was it the way A was taught revision in high school that was wrong or perhaps she was not serious about schoolwork in high school to retain the knowledge? It is possible that when she enrolled in college, she became more of a responsible student and followed everything the professors told her. Despite A taking the blame, by confessing that she did not listen, I believe the cause of her lack of proper revision education until college to be different. I feel that her high school teacher did not explain revision as clearly as her college professor did. Whether it is because of the former or latter, both causes would result the same effect.
Even if A was careless about her education in high school, lessons about revision should capture the students’ attention so that they will care about what they are learning. Yet, if the college professor explained the process in a more understandable way, then again, high school education of revision in writing has to change. Although at the time of asking these questions, I did not know this was where my interview would take my focus, A stepped in and introduced the new topic that I had not even thought of towards the end of our talking.
At the conclusion of the interview, I had asked A if there was anything about revision that we had not talked above that she felt important to mention. Although I was expecting her to say no, she declared the need to teach revision at an earlier education level.
Excerpt 4: Teach Revision Earlier!
H – Okay, sounds good. Um, is there
anything that we haven’t talked about with revision that you feel like that you
want to add? Any topic?
A – Uh, uhhh. Just about how like I think it
should probably be taught at an earlier age. Like I think in high school it
should be taken a lot more seriously so that way it isn’t just something you
learn when you’re in college. Like people would get into way better colleges if
they knew that beforehand. Like they could have written way better essays. Like
unless you were at home and your mother was like an English major, you’re not
gonna know how to do all those revision things or unless you went to like some
preparatory school in like the richest place ever. So I think it should be
taught at an earlier age.
Though it took a moment of thought
to express the words, A eventually reveals her belief that revision should be
taught at an earlier age. Next, she says
that it should be “taken more seriously” in high school. Therefore, again she
mentions that it was taught in high school, but not in a significant manner.
Then, A says that she believes that students would get accepted into “ way
better colleges” if they were taught revision earlier. This gives a small look
into the value that A has in revision. With this one change, a course of a
person’s future can change—the college he or she attends. Finally, A states
that as the education in revision is now, only those high school students with
an English major mother at home or who are in a rich prep school know the
proper revision techniques. In the last statement, two cultural stories are
mentioned. First, that English majors are good at revising. However, this is
not the case. Every person is different, as is his or her writing and revision
techniques. Paradoxically, some English majors do not revise at all, while some
Biology majors are obsessive about their revision strategies. A degree does not
make a respectable writer, the time and effort a person takes in perfecting his
or her writing does. Secondly, that rich, preparatory schools give a better
education. What is interesting about this is, in the interview, in an excerpt
not included, A mentioned that she went to a private, rigorous Catholic high
school. If her logic is correct, would not she herself know the best revision
methods before college? A contradicts herself for a second time. Despite the
possible mistakes in her answer, A dove into a topic that I had not considered.
After that, I wanted to know more of her opinion on how revision at an earlier
age could help students.
Excerpt 5: The Benefits
of Revision
At
this point, A and I were openly conversing. However, she took the time to explain
more benefits of revision.
A – Especially for SATs and stuff
because they comes up like a year later! You have to be ready for everything.
Um, I don’t know about HSPAs because I didn’t go to a public school. I don’t
know if there’s any writing with that, but I’m sure that would help. I’m sure
if there’s a reading section or something else, by knowing writing skills,
you’re going to be able to pick out things and reading is a lot easier also.
It’s not only just the writing, so.
A further illustrates all students that can be helped from a better revision education by listing benefits of revision at an earlier age. It will help standardized tests and even the SATs, which can be helpful when applying for college. She also believes it helps with critical reading, not just writing. A mentions that if one knows the correct way to write, he or she will be able to select certain elements that are asked about on tests. This topic was an aspect that had escaped my observation of revision. However, after letting A explain all the ways that revision can help a student just by teaching it earlier, I feel it is clear that an entire alteration of how revision is taught could all the more beneficial.
A further illustrates all students that can be helped from a better revision education by listing benefits of revision at an earlier age. It will help standardized tests and even the SATs, which can be helpful when applying for college. She also believes it helps with critical reading, not just writing. A mentions that if one knows the correct way to write, he or she will be able to select certain elements that are asked about on tests. This topic was an aspect that had escaped my observation of revision. However, after letting A explain all the ways that revision can help a student just by teaching it earlier, I feel it is clear that an entire alteration of how revision is taught could all the more beneficial.
Conclusion
To conclude, this study supports Myhill
and Jones’ suggestion for a need to change the way students are taught revision
in high school in the hopes that they will retain the skills more effectively
for future use. A most likely did not realize that she contradicted herself
during our interview; however, when she volunteered the information about
feeling that revision should be taught at an earlier age, in retrospect, it
implied that she sensed there was a problem in your revision education all
along.
Where the previous researchers studied a trend in the revision methods of students, this study examines the shortcomings in one student’s revision experience. Due to this work being merely a case study of one student, further research would need to be conducted with students from multiple regions, age groups, and education levels to truly prove the hypothesis. If time and accessibility would have permitted, I would have liked to have interview multiple, more diverse students, survey students to monitor the connections in problems of revision education, and I would have liked to include a few teachers in my study to see their perspectives on the issue. This is simply an introduction into an issue currently plaguing writing studies. Research in the future would prove the need for specific analysis.
Where the previous researchers studied a trend in the revision methods of students, this study examines the shortcomings in one student’s revision experience. Due to this work being merely a case study of one student, further research would need to be conducted with students from multiple regions, age groups, and education levels to truly prove the hypothesis. If time and accessibility would have permitted, I would have liked to have interview multiple, more diverse students, survey students to monitor the connections in problems of revision education, and I would have liked to include a few teachers in my study to see their perspectives on the issue. This is simply an introduction into an issue currently plaguing writing studies. Research in the future would prove the need for specific analysis.
Work
Cited
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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