The essay/study that we read for today's class contained many relevant and appealing subjects for me. One really funny thing from the reading though was when Sommers first started talking about the students that she used in her experiment and how the majority of them rejected the words revision and rewrite. As I started reading their reasoning I just started laughing because it sounded ridiculous to me. It seemed to me like the process they used instead was shallow and, although necessary, not all there is to writing.
Those beliefs were supported by Sommers' investigation into the editing process of experienced writers. They edited on the sentence and word level, but more importantly they edited on the conceptual level. Making sure their ideas and arguments were well-supported, relevant, and flowing is more important for experienced writers than gramatic details.
This is all very logical to me, I feel that I can edit like this, getting better with time of course. But I realized that I don't feel like I can edit my/others' concepts if I get distracted by the words and sentence mistakes. It's easier for me to focus when I can understand what I am, or another writer is, trying to say in the first place, when the intent is clear. But maybe I'll be able to adapt and look past the grammatical and punctual mistakes in the future... But right now I don't see a problem with editing words and sentences first and worrying about concepts after.
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I agree. The beginner writer’s way of approaching revision does seem a bit shallow, as you said.
After reading that article, on the revision studies of beginner writers and experienced writers, I found myself to identify with the beginner writers. When I write essays, I notice I attempt to use vocabulary terms, thinking that it will enhance the quality of my paper. I too, think of revising as replacement of words for better words with the handy thesaurus and fixing grammatical errors. I never actually thought of completely rethinking my ideas for an essay and revising on the conceptual level.
However, this article brought up this new idea of focusing on the topics presented in the essay rather than the grammatical details.
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