SQR 3

Raymundo Rivera
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 does a great job in this article on showing us how experienced writers use the method of revising for making a remarkable writing. Revision is a tool used by the writers to improve their paper after doing it for first time, they go back and revise their paper to check for all the main points and the miss place sentences or organization. It also says that we don’t have a pattern for writing, we write the way we want everything is going to be different each time. We don’t write the same way we talk, we have to write in a formal manner and most of us when we talk use slang words that we would never use in a formal composition. We cannot go back in a speech but we can go back on a writing to revise it. On the article it says that The spoken word cannot be revised. The article also gives several revision strategies, one is example is rewriting it helps the writer to correct his mistakes on the first paper. Usually the experience writers are the ones who use this method of revision by rewriting their composition. Most of the students fail to do this, to go back and rewrite the paper or start a new one, they mainly use the scratching out some sentences and that’s it.

Question:

What are some of the revision strategies experience writers use?

Response:

Nancy gives us great examples in her article, most of the experience writers take the time to rewrite their writing to have a better view of their work an rearrange his or her toughs and ideas. This helps them to work better on their organization of the paragraphs and sentences. It also helps them on their grammar mistakes and some other errors they made on the composition. Another strategy is the scratch out method this involves going over the paper and changing words that fit better on the topic and in the sentence. Another common strategy is the Marking out which is very similar to the scratching out method is just marking some words and putting in some new ones. Personally I don’t like rewriting my paper it takes me a long time so I use the scratching out method of substituting words and phrases in the writings.