Guest Post | Get Ready for College Writing by Learning to Revise

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Related ArticleCredit Peter DaSilva for The New York Times

Do you have your students revise their essays? If so, is their process mostly a matter of adding some commas and correcting spelling errors — or are they actually rethinking their writing to make it clearer and stronger?

In this post our guest blogger Lionel Anderson, assistant director of the Office of Academic Resources at Haverford College and a board member of TeenSHARP, offers advice to bridge the gap between the demands of high school and college writing by teaching students the importance of a rigorous revision process.

How do you teach students this skill? Tell us below.

— The Learning Network


Get Ready for College Writing by Learning to Revise
By Lionel Anderson

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Related ArticleCredit Viktor Koen

When I was an undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania, one of my professors demanded four revisions of the same paper — one semester-long revision process for one measly grade.

Sadistic as it was, the five iterations revealed shocking habits in our early drafts. Weight Watchers before-and-after photos had nothing on drafts one and five. She taught us the vast distance between first attempts and a finished product.

At Haverford, as at many colleges and universities, first-year students all take writing-intensive seminars. The courses are as varied as they are rigorous, as you can see by scanning this year’s list.

Prof. Barbara Hall, who teaches a first-year seminar called “Perspectives on Immigration and Education in the United States,” tells her students on day one that she’s going to push them as writers, strip what’s familiar — and then push a whole lot more.

“In most cases, students arrive at colleges as one-draft writers and need to be taught that process-oriented writing often calls for massive revision,” she says.

Should this kind of writing start earlier, I asked her? Can high school teachers in all subject areas oppose the dark forces of texting, tweeting and Facebooking to prepare teenagers for revision-rich writing ahead of their freshman year?

“Of course! And it can be fun,” she answered.

Below, some specific suggestions for how to do it.


Assign fewer papers, but more drafts.

Many college professors would not only agree with this advice, but also apply it to their own writing.

In a recent Times Room for Debate forum about essay writing, for example, J. Elizabeth Clark, a professor of English at LaGuardia Community College, writes:

Good writing is a developmental process, one that immerses students in the practice of working as a writer. They wrestle with feedback from peers and their instructors; they learn to self-evaluate; they use these critiques to revise and rewrite. They compose in a digital world, demonstrating mastery of effective communication in 21st century academic, social and professional environments. My colleagues and I assess every part of the writing process, not just an end product. For this 300-word essay, I consulted 11 colleagues and wrote several drafts, because that’s how real writing works.

But what is a revision? Though herding unruly commas and semicolons is essential, Haverford’s Professor Hall points out that “a first draft plus proofreading does not equal a final draft.” Students need to know the difference between editing and proofreading. She describes editing as a careful review for logical consistency, strength of argument, and structural coherence — and doesn’t advocate close proofreading until later drafts.

Are questions resolved? Your position(s) well defended? Did you follow the prompt? Is there clarity? Have your students answer these questions early and often.

Ideas:

  • Host a writing clinic to delineate the differences between proofreading and editing.
  • Create a grading rubric that prioritizes editing and revision.
  • Award extra credit to students who revise and resubmit old papers from a previous semester or quarter.
  • Consider assigning shorter forms of writing that lead up to a final paper — or even replace it. The Times article “Blogs vs. Term Papers” describes how “blog writing has become a basic requirement in everything from M.B.A. to literature courses” in universities across the country.

Teach students to plan time for revision.

The writer Nora Ephron, who died in 2012, wrote an essay for The Times in 1986 called “Revision and Life: Take It From the Top — Again.” In it, she admits she was once a one-draft writer:

When I was in college, I revised nothing. I wrote out my papers in longhand, typed them up and turned them in. It would never have crossed my mind that what I had produced was only a first draft and that I had more work to do; the idea was to get to the end, and once you had got to the end you were finished.

Paul Farber, who teaches Haverford’s first-year seminar “Borders, Walls and Bridges: Cultural Approaches to Divided Cities,” has some advice for freshmen who might feel the same way:

“Anticipate that you will have a revision process. If you write with the awareness that you could eventually build on your original draft, you can more productively incorporate feedback from a professor, trusted writing partner, or follow up with your own ideas as they evolve. When you complete a draft, and then immediately print it out to submit without any plan for revision, this most often works to your disadvantage.”

Idea:

  • Have students observe their own writing, proofreading and editing process and record the average time spent completing assignments. Then, have them consciously build in more revision time. Dr. Farber suggests that “even taking a few minutes or hours between draft completion and editing will allow you to see your writing from a new perspective. Sometimes a change in location or reading your paper aloud accomplishes that same critical distance.”

Help students understand that there isn’t one unbreakable list of writing rules.

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Related ArticleCredit Alex Camlin

For many high school students, writing papers has mostly been about following a teacher’s rules to get a good grade. But not all the writing guidelines one learns in high school necessarily translate to the discipline-specific nature of college writing.

“Writing to rules limits the tools students can bring to developing their arguments,” Professor Hall says. “They’re too concerned with ‘breaking rules’ and not concerned enough with doing everything possible to develop stronger arguments for their points.”

Ideas:

  • Share with students some of the ideas from professional essayists, novelists, journalists, linguists and more in this Learning Network post, “Writing Rules! Advice From The Times on Writing Well.”
  • Have students list seven or eight rules they associate with formal writing. (For example, never beginning a sentence with “and,” “but” or “or”; structuring a five-paragraph essay with an introduction, three body paragraphs and a conclusion; never using the first person; etc.)
  • Then, invite them to carefully review some formal “real world” writing, like the four Times articles below, noting where the author employs or abandons those rules. How well did the rule-breaking work?

Give writers readers.

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Mary Beth Taylor teaching fourth graders cursive writing in Wilmington, N.C. New research shows people learning a new task prefer positive feedback. Related Article Credit Mike Spencer/Wilmington Star-News, via Associated Press

Many high school teachers already have students peer-edit essays. This helps them develop an editor’s eye, teaches them that writing is not just a solitary activity and exposes them to good practices they might emulate.

But not all high school teachers realize many college professors employ this practice, too.

“Encourage your students to assemble a team of readers and to be a reader for others,” Professor Hall recommends. The peer-editing process, she says, “develops the critical lens and repositions them as ‘knowers.’ ”

Idea:

  • On the question of what kinds of feedback to give writers, students and teachers alike might read the 2013 Times article “You’ve Been Doing a Fantastic Job. Just One Thing …,” which explains that giving feedback isn’t as simple as we might think.
  • Research shows that “when people are experts on a subject, or consider themselves experts, they’re more eager to hear negative feedback, while those novices are more likely to seek positive responses.” After reading the article, teachers might ask students to note what kind of feedback helps them most.

Above all, however, learning how to revise is a personal process.

“Figure out what works best for you,” Dr. Farber tells students. “The more self-aware you are about what helps you improve upon previous drafts, or what scares you about returning to work in progress, the more you can adjust to a routine that is proper for you.”

(This post, by the way? It went through at least 20 revisions.)


As a teenager himself, Mr. Anderson was a New York Times Scholar; later he wrote for The Times’s Choice blog. You can follow him on Twitter.

Comments are no longer being accepted.

Truly great advice. Your article has reaffirmed for me the value of looking over my writing, rather than believing that once I’ve written the conclusion I’m finished. I think a lot of students assume they don’t have time to revise, but as you said even waiting a few hours before looking over a paper can make all the difference. Even though you’re writing to teachers, as a student I’m inspired to incorporate your clear and straightforward suggestions for myself. Can’t wait to read more!

In my opinion, good writing is not difficult to learn once a person gets past three things: (1) the need to finish, (2) these are my thoughts so why should I use your words, (3) who says your way is best. I recall Samuel Clements who is alleged to have said something like don’t tell me how to write – I am the writer. He was more eloquent of course

I also think it is important to remember that writing is about two things: the subject (topic) and the delivery. If you are teaching writing skills, teach writing and remove the need to research, understand and present a topic. Divorce the two. Require the students to write about things they know personally. For example, “Tell us what you had for dinner last night” or “What is your role on the football team”. This exercise now divorces the skill of writing from presenting a topic. Developing a topic from research or literature should be reserved for university and college-level courses.

My thoughts/opinions in my first draft. You see I just wanted to finish!

I used teams of students to develop papers. The goal was to provide each team with a greater supply of researchers and reviewers. The goal was to insure greater learning of the topic and better clearer and more efficient delivery. This wasn’t always the case for a variety of reasons, the biggest was they just wanted to get the paper done.

I would tell them that most of them spent more time learning to drive then on learning to write well digested ideas. I would tell them if they learned to write well they would never have to drive themselves again.

I use several techniques with student essay writing. First, I stress process–brainstorming and drafts. I also use peer editing sessions, where I provide students with rubrics and guidelines on how to edit. Collaborative writing, when students work on an essay together, works well–I try to pair students based on skill level (high and lower level). I use my own model paragraphs in class and also provide a step-by-step list of suggestions/directives for writing the essay. I find that if students know how to write a good introductory paragraph, they are more successful with writing the rest of the essay. I have free resources on my website if anyone is interested. Thank you.

James Mulhern, //www.synthesizingeducation.net

Francesca Grossman April 27, 2014 · 2:43 pm

Yes! Revision is the meat of the writing process. And revising alone is almost never as beneficial as revising with the help of a devoted writing partner, tutor or teacher. Yet we expected of our high school students more often than not.

As Nancy Sommers (Director of the Harvard College Writing Program for over 20 years) says in her wonderful book, Responding to Student Writers, “Comments matter…written responses are the most enduring form of communication we have with our students.” In addition, ” [e]verything shifts when we transfer the focus of our comments from the paper to the student, from monologue to dialogue.” We must establish a relationship with our students through the work to help them as they grow as successful writers.

We take Nancy’s comments to heart in our work, and have developed a platform and a professional development curriculum to support teachers as they pursue quality enduring feedback at //www.writetheworld.com.

Francesca Kaplan Grossman April 27, 2014 · 3:53 pm

Yes. I agree that revision is the meat of the writing process. And revising alone is almost never as beneficial as revising with the help of a devoted writing partner, tutor or teacher. But while what Dr. Anderson says about teachers and their efforts for revision is true, it is also important to think about revision from the student perspective and the student experience. Students have to truly understand feedback and revision. They have to internalize the process so that they do not “arrive at colleges as one-draft writers and need to be taught that process-oriented writing often calls for massive revision.”

We at Write the World feel strongly that this kind of empowerment is essential for student writers to improve and that supporting both the educator as well as the student is essential. We must establish a relationship with our students through the work to help them as they grow as successful writers.

Writing is always about revision and it is a process and teachers and students tend to reduce it to a draft or revision as if it is linear. What we all need to understand is that it is iterative.

We want to support student writers and their teachers to understand the heart of the writing process. //www.writetheworld.com.

So proud of you, L! Keep writing & reminding them that the Bronx births the best.

So many institutions are obsessed with the number of essay, “assessments”, to prove their students are working hard as writers. As a high school teacher, I use the mantra of this article, “do less papers and more drafts.” I make my students print hard copies of each draft, mark changes on the hard copy, and then enter those changes into their word processor. In this way, they have a record of changes, and they have to turn in all these carved-up copies. I also make them prioritize drafts, starting with revision and then moving to editing. Revision I define as “macro” issues–ideas and organization. Once they have perfected those issues, they move on to editing or “micro” issues–language, conventions, presentation. In this way, they are not concentrating on details like comma splices or citation until they have perfected strategic concepts like thesis statements and evidence.

To me, this is not revolutionary, but how most writers have always used process. However, it takes time to revise and mull over these decisions, and the modern student does not live in an environment that encourages this kind of patient consideration.

Wonderful piece with deeply important perspectives. I have had the pleasure and honor of working closely with Barbara Hall through the Haverford Writing Center, and she has been instrumental in supporting me through the process of writing my senior thesis; I would not have made it without her relentless encouragement and her scaffolding of how to jump start myself to dive into the often overwhelming revision process. I hope that this mindset on writing and expression increasingly becomes the norm in all of our educational institutions, especially starting early in the primary and secondary grades.

I feel reading and writing skills really begin at infancy with two very important things: lower average stress and high social vocabulary. Presently we are “unaware” of a much better, constructive definition of average stress. We presently believe (wrongly) that stress only occurs during some present situation and even some physical work. We need to see stress more accurately as many layers of mental work our minds are dealing with that stay with us from past, present, future, experiences, problems, needs, anything that creates an unresolved mental work. Try to visualize an upright rectangle, representing our full mental energy, same for all aside from organic dysfunction. Now begin drawing in from the bottom, narrowly spaced, horizontal lines to show layers of mental work from many areas of our life that come up. The space left over shows our leftover mental energy and also our length of reflection time. This shows just how our individual environments and differential treatment greatly affect thinking, learning, motivation, and mental health.
I see reading and writing motivation and skills as accumulating from three important skills: 1. average stress that allows for the abstract skill of reading: to decode, visualize, reach into social vocabulary for new words in print, organize with previous information, and enjoy the process. 2. higher social vocabulary with experience with sentence structure communication with more affluent adults peers. 3. A more correct dynamics in approaching newer mental work more slowly at first that increases more enjoyment, reflection, and motivation to learn more. I feel girls due to better more positive social treatment from infancy have lower average stress, higher social vocabulary/knowledge of sentence structure, and from our stability have more ease of pace in approaching newer mental work. This allows us to grow in pace and skills more easily later.
I feel boys due to more aggressive treatment from infancy; much more social emotional distance created; much less positive communication; and admonition to try hard creates many harmful obstacles to reading.
I feel we need lower average stress, more ease of learning/writing, and higher social vocabulary for writing skills. II feel girls have lower average stress creating more ease of learning, higher social vocabulary and – lower muscle tension, creating better handwriting skills and more motivation to write. I feel boys are hurt by having higher average stress creating higher muscle tension and improper pace creating much more pressure/tighter grip on pencil/pen that hurts both writing and motivation to write. The lower social vocabulary and lack of experience with sentence structure also hurts writing motivation. We need to help all students learn to enjoy the reading and writing process by understanding how these base areas need to be developed in children while learning their reading and writing. This includes providing more breaks from reading and writing; more ease of reading and writing; more enunciation of phonics; more kind, caring, reinforcing for relaxing grip easing pressure and having sharp pencils for writing exercises, especially for boys.
We need to teach visualization, reflection time (lose the rush to read and write) gain the love and motivation to read and write. From this we can begin to build up to much better motivation leading up to the more complex skills of reading and writing for all students. //learningtheory.homestead.com/Theory.html

I am a high school freshman in Florida, and I wholeheartedly believe in several revisions to one piece of writing. It’s very important to read and reread over and over again to make sure the piece is perfect, especially if it’s graded. The article helped me better understand the importance of revising writing. Though the article cleared up my thoughts on this topic, I feel the article should’ve included some kind of example; a first-draft paragraph along with a revised final draft, with a blurb telling us how many times the original piece was actaully revised before the final copy was produced. But overall, amazing article!

When I hear the word “revision” I think of having to fix something that is wrong, which in the case of writing means your work is less than perfect. That being said,when being told I must make revisions I feel an ounce of offense because I’m essentially being told I wrote wrong. However, after reading this article I was brought to a light of understanding that revisions don’t mean wrong, but having the potential to be better. As laborious as doing multiple revisions sounds, the request of them is only done for the works benefit. One may think their writing can’t be improved, but with a wise eye one can realize the potential of improvement is always there.

I think that good writing is only beneficial when you keep it simple and straight forward. I feel like the value of your writing only makes much more sense when you put effort in your drafts which makes you work on your skills and your planning. Often, you’re taught to limit yourself because you might get off topic or your vision of the topic is different but with this article it really demonstrates how there should be no limits in your writing, only revision and the tools you can bring to the paper. Even you said so yourself, you revised 20 times before publishing your article. It really makes the difference between editing and proof reading.

I agree one must go through many revisions to have a good essay. Even if someone isn’t a good writer it makes a huge difference in quality if they revise a couple times than turning in the first edited draft. You could catch a sentence that you know could sound better if you thought more on it. I find this as really good advice, as a writer I always find myself going back to revise my work many times, I never truly feel it’s finished.

Lauren and Miranda August 31, 2015 · 1:24 pm

I completely agree with your standpoint and opinion on revision. Your thoughts that revision is a necessity in the writing process is brilliant. As an amateur writer, I feel that revision has helped me build on my drafts and writing skills. Typically, you’d assume a second revision would be necessary, three tops. But your exquisite advice that revision is truly the base of the whole writing process has really opened my eyes. Your time spent on writing this article is very much appreciated because I will continue to use the process explained throughout the article in my everyday writing. Truthfully, not doing the revision would be blatant stupidity, for you can never get the best draft through the first try. Your skills only develop as you continue with your revisions, so it’s really a win-win for you, your paper, and all of your future papers.

Revising and editing are a writers best friend but at the same time their worst enemy. Originally in my schooling I was led to believe that revising was just the basic editing job, a couple commas here and a spelling correction there. Reading this article I am forced to believe differently. As talked about in the article, I was always the kind of person to write a rough draft and just knit pick a couple sentences here and there. Looking back I see just how wrong I was. Revisions are a chance to advance your writing and transform your paper to its true potential. Revising comes with the bitter connotation of repetitive and relentless work, but the results don’t lie. Once you compare your final draft to your first attempt, you want to see true improvement, and revising is a great rule of thumb to get there.

I really appreciate this advice. This article reminded me of the importance of revision and how it is a big, but essential process. Most kids around my age just don’t want to revise their articles because of the time it takes to do so. I also love the advice of coming back to review a paper after you finish to get a new perspective to revise with. As a student a will use this article to help me with the process of revisions for my writing.

I agree with this article because the reason people believe that once they are finished writing their essay is completely completed is due to the fact that that is what we were taught. Rereading the paper in a different setting or even getting a peer to read and revise is very helpful advice. A good paper takes more work and steps. Revision is something students should spend more time on.

My opinion is that this is a really great article to learn off of. It says what you should do to revise and how to revise the article. Some kids don’t think they have to revise, but everyone should revise their article at least 5 times just to make sure they don’t have anything wrong with their article. I think that it is important to revise and edit your article.

Hey Olivia, you are right. If one leeps revising then with every revision they can find that they have discovered something new and feel more confident about the subject. This is a real fact.