Bernard Malamud (1988) called revision "one of the exquisite pleasures of writing." Most of my students offer a virtual chuckle (lol) when they read this quotation at the beginning of our Unit 7 seminar on revision. They’re probably wondering why anyone would take pleasure in fixing comma splices and correcting spelling, because for most Kaplan students in beginning writing courses, this is their idea of revision. They expect to do little more than edit their essays. As I continue my tradition of beginning each seminar with inspirational quotations from famous writers (a technique they tend to enjoy), the students are further amused to read Ezra Pound’s words about his famous poem, "In a Station of the Metro," which most of them remember from American Lit in high school: "I wrote a thirty line poem, and destroyed it…Six months later I made a poem half that length; a year later I made the following... ‘The apparition of these faces in the crowd:/Petals, on a wet, black bough.’" (Pound, 1916)."Seriously?" they type in unison. "Pound thought about two lines for a year?"
"Good thing this class is only ten weeks," I reply.
Students enter our classes assuming that "good writers" don’t revise much, if at all. They quickly realize that great writers spend hours, weeks, even years revising their work, a fact that gives them confidence and comfort. After all, they are now in good company! Revising is not a part of bad writing; it’s a part of good writing. They also quickly realize that while revision includes editing, it involves a lot more than changing "affect" to "effect" or joining two complete sentences with a semi-colon rather than a comma. Revision means grappling with content, organization, audience, research integration, and transitions. It means deleting information that is off topic, streamlining the thesis statement, and adding analysis to that three sentence paragraph in the middle of the paper. Revision means re-seeing their paper as an objective reader might.
To revise effectively and efficiently, students must change their habits. Rather than starting with the easy grammatical corrections, they learn to use a "top-down" method, which saves time because it teaches students to fix global issues, or the higher level problems, first. If they don’t do this, they may spend twenty minutes rewording a section that they later realize does not belong in the paper. Global issues include problems with content or argument. For example, the student may need to add analysis, acknowledge the nuances of an opposing argument, or insert more evidence. As we offer feedback to students, it’s important to engage with their ideas, to push them to think harder about their subject, and to stress that writing is an act of discovery.
For most students, the global issues will revolve around organization. Teaching students how a paper fits together demystifies the writing process and shows them that writing well is not something most of us are born with; it’s something we learn. Approaching writing structurally often calms even the most anxious students and helps them understand that good papers are built upon a solid framework. When students revise their essays, they use a variety of methods to check this structure. Does the thesis serve as a map that previews the main points of the essay? Does each paragraph have topic sentence? We think of the thesis and topic sentences as the skeleton of the paper, the support for the flesh—reasons, evidence, and analysis—of the paper. Without the bones, the body has no shape. To revise the structure, students use a post-draft outline, which is an outline created after the draft is written by pulling out the thesis and main ideas of each paragraph. This exercise allows students to see if a paragraph needs to be moved, the thesis revised, or a topic sentence rewritten. Looking at the skeleton of the paper enables students to see their argument with fresh eyes.
Students move further down the revision ladder by considering individual paragraphs. Are the ideas well-organized within the paragraph? I encourage students to do an exercise that I’ve often used successfully in the face-to-face classroom environment. I tell them to cut up a paragraph into individual sentences and have a friend or family member put it back together. Did the partner replicate the original structure? This method also allows students to rearrange their sentences, an exercise that often highlights problem spots. Students also focus on adding evidence, analyzing the outside sources, and creating transitions between ideas.
Only when students have worked hard on these global issues should they move to the local level revision, which consists of correcting grammatical errors, ensuring a consistent point of view, rewording confusing passages, and fixing spelling errors. Finally, the students arrive where they expected to start! We discuss the most common grammatical errors, such as comma splices, fragments, and noun/pronoun agreement, but most importantly, students see examples from student papers and fix them. Actually, correcting grammatical mistakes together helps them to master the concepts and feel more confident correcting their own errors. Students learn practical techniques for editing their papers, such as reading their writing aloud, having someone else read the paper to them, searching the essay for one problem at a time, and using checklists to guide their revision.
Learning to revise is perhaps one of the most essential parts of the writing process, if only because few of us produce polished writing on the first try. The revision skills students learn will help them in other Kaplan classes and beyond, but students will revert to old habits quickly. WAC provides us with a golden opportunity to reinforce these vital lessons in courses across the university, whether it’s in psychology, biology, business, or criminal justice. As we teach students to revise, we must also help them to continue to see with "fresh eyes." We must continue to inspire and encourage them. To that end, I infuse our discussions with anecdotes about other writers, like James Joyce, who spent seven years writing Ulysses—a 732 page novel that chronicles the events of one day ("Classic Text," 2002, para. 1). Good thing this class only lasts ten weeks…
Reference Page:
James Joyce/Ulysses: the classic text: traditions and interpretations. (2002). Retrieved on October 23, 2009, from University of Wisconsin-Milwaulkee website: http://www.uwm.edu/Library/special/exhibits/clastext/clspg158.htm
Malamud, Bernard. (Sunday, March 20, 1988). Reflections of a writer: long work, short life. [electronic version]. The New York Times. Retrieved October 24, 2009, from http://www.nytimes.com/1988/03/20/books/malamud-reflections.html?adxnnl=0&adxnnlx=1155745869-nTdHqUdudSdYKqL7wfDNSQ&pagewanted=5
Pound, E. (1916). On in a station of the metro. Gaudier-Brzeska. Retrieved October 24, 2009 from the University of Illinois website: hppt://www.english.illiniois.edu/maps/poets/m_r/pound/metro.htm
Did you know...Kate plays competitive league tennis and has won seven trophies in the last five years? She's also a rabid fan of Duke basketball, Virginia Tech football, Philadelphia Phillies, and her son’s flag football team.
Kate is part-time faculty in the composition department in the School of Arts and Sciences.
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