SQR 3 Jesus Zapata

September 10, 2010
SQR 3

Jesus Zapata
ENG 1320/1301. 161
Phan Thi Thuy Trang
September 10, 2010

Revision Strategies of Student Writers and Experienced Adult Writers

Nancy Sommers “Revision Strategies of Student Writers and Experienced Adult Writers”
College Composition and Communication, Vol. 31, No 4 (Dec., 1980), pp. 378-388

Summary
Nancy Sommers writes this great article to explain why writing needs a strategy of revision in order for people’s papers to be well written. Revision is a tool to see what is beyond hearing, it is a tool that altogether leads to good writing. However, Sommers stresses that writing is not based on a linear process. This means that writing is not a type of patterns, or relationship. Writing does not follow a line, because it is unpredictable. Writing is never written one way, and only one way. Also, no one can ever refer to writing as speech. This is because the way we speak, is not the way we write. A lot of people usually speak in a slang manner with friends or even some of their parents. No matter what, when you are writing in school, you have to write the proper way in order for it to be proper and formal. In revision, good techniques that Sommers uses that helps her write well are methods like; scratching over and doing over again, reviewing and re doing, marking out, and slashing and throwing out stuff that does not make sense. Doing this, repetition occurs, and that is great.

Question?: Why is Sommers arguing that writing is not linear and why writing can’t be compared to speech?

Response:
Writing being based on a linear pattern is just a theory because people like James Britton believe writing is a series of stages in metaphors of pattern growth. Writing is not linear because it is based on traditional rhetoric models. Speech could be referred to as linear however, writing can simply not be. You cannot revise speech because it is impossible to go back and say what you have already said. In writing, you need to revision in order to improve your work because most of the time, your first draft is not perfect. As humans everyone makes mistakes, so therefore revision is alright for everyone to use to correct what they forgot to add or did not add in their work. The spoken word can just not be revised so revision separates the written text from spoken speech. Writing is not a basic line of repeated process over and over again. If writing was linear, then writing would be very boredom and there would not be as many writers as we have in this world today. Every writer is different, meaning everyone uses different methods whether it is reviewing your work after a few lines, sentences, paragraphs, or after an entire written page. Writing is very unpredictable, which makes it very interesting. It is unpredictable because you usually do not know what you are going to write about. Luckily we have things inside of us like felt sense, that helps us develop a great feeling an ideas about what to write about.