assignment 1- Final Draft

Assignment #1- Final Draft

In Nancy Sommers article it seems that there is a significant difference on how student writers and experienced writers view revision, as depicted by these two excerpts from her article, “The students understand the revision process as a rewording activity” and the experienced writer “It means taking apart what I have written and putting it back together again.” I was taught to revise and write in school from my English classes. My teachers always focused on grammar, punctuation, lexical repetition and structural errors rather than what I had to say in my paper. I was either told or it was written in red ink on my paper to “fix”, “change” or “re-do” my paper. This teaching has caused me to focus with more micro issues like the student writers in Sommers’ article, rather than my ideas, points or arguments like the experienced writer. Reading this article was an eye opener for me because I then reflected on my own writing to see how and why I write the way that I do when dealing with the concept of revision and writing papers.

Essentially, English courses caused me to focus more on lexical repetition as opposed to conceptual repetition as Sommers wrote in article. “The students place a symbolic importance on their selection and rejection of words as the determiners of success or failure for their compositions….” From my past experience I would agree to the above quote because I was taught to utilize the thesaurus dictionary in search of different words to express the same idea or feeling. For example, I had to write about a school field trip to the Exploratorium and I am trying to explain the feeling of being stimulated by the various artwork and science projects and my next step would be to look through the thesaurus dictionary to find different words for “stimuli” in order not to repeat the same word twice. The teacher would focus on the word choices, my spelling and grammar as opposed to the content or ideas that I had experienced on the field trip. I would write for the assignment and conform to what I thought the English teacher wanted rather than validating my creative beliefs and my ideas. Just as was stated by one student writer in Sommers, research, “The changes that I make are usually just marking out words and putting different ones in.”

Historically English students are taught structurally and my perspective is very similar to other student writers as described by Sommers. For example "re-doing means cleaning up the paper and crossing out" and another example described by Sommers "reviewing means just using better words and eliminating words that are not needed." The English phobia that creates lack of creativity or motivation to write contributes to a student writer to become fearful of writing due to no positive reinforcements of conceptual writing.

I feel conceptual revisions are lost in the process of writing because as a student writer you are more focused on word choice, sentence run-ons and fragment sentences etc. For me, this experience has decreased my desire to write. I feel “what’s the point, I will get a “C” anyways as long as my grammar and word choices are good. Another example, I remember writing papers about books I had read and the teacher was so focused on how it was structured clearly because all I saw was red ink everywhere as opposed to my interpretation of the book. As a student writer English writing does not seem creative and it goes with the experience that I have had in the past with English teachers. My past English teachers would always make comments on my papers “ too many passive words” or cross out words or circle misspelled words in red or black ink. The English teachers that I have experienced in my past have never included positive feedback causing me not to try my best and maintain a “C” average. I believe if teachers gave me positive feedback such as “ Great Job Yvonne, you might want to explore a few more ideas of what x y and z means” rather than focusing on my grammar mistakes it would have increased my interest in writing and perhaps increased my writing skills. Per Sommers’ article, the experience writer states, "My first drafts is usually very scattered. In rewriting, I find the line of argument. After the argument is resolved, I am much more interested in word choice and phrasing.” I really liked this line because I never really actually got to put any creative thoughts or “the line of argument” into any of my past English papers. Furthermore, I would have learned the concept of what effective writing is all about by doing rough drafts without caring about words or grammar and just focus on my idea and later write a final draft to clean up the paper.

In conclusion, after reading Sommers’ article in comparing student writers vs. experienced writers it has given me a new outlook of how to write a good paper. It also gave me an insight of how I use to write and why I did not like to write. Sommers’ article also helped me to identify the importance of revision and what constitutes revision, the difference between lexical and conceptual repetition. “I ask major theoretical questions of my ideas, respond to those questions, and think of proportion and structure, and try to find a controlling.” I really like this quote because you are questioning your ideas and really processing information instead of memorizing/focusing on words. I agree with Sommers’ article regarding revision strategies of student writers vs. revision strategies of experienced writers based on my personal experiences. I now believe what makes good writing is not how good the grammar is, but the “concept” or ideas that you have been conveying to your readers. Writing should not come from an overly structured place but from a creatively liberated place in the mind that can flow freely and passionately. When one is not preoccupied with structural confines, creativity will flow more fluidly, thus, producing a well written paper where ideas and thoughts are not lost during the editorial process.