Revising Strategies in Twelfth Grade Students Transactional Writing

This study reports the results of analysis of 6,129 revisions in 100 randomly selected sets of twelfth grade students* drafts of an informative/ argumentative essay. An exhaustive and mutually exclusive scheme was evolved to classify each revision including six categories from surface to multiple-sentence at three times during composing, in-process first draft, between- draft, and inprocess final draft. Surface and word levels proved to be the most frequent units of revision, and four times as many of them occurred at in-process stages as occurred between drafts. Significant associations for levels and times were found with qualitative ratings; e.g., negative associations of surface level revisions and mechanics ratings, positive associations of betweendraft changes and all quality ratings, positive associations of word, sentence, and clause level changes and all ratings. Comparisons between essays rated highest and lowest suggested definite developmental differences in the ability to revise successfully. Research into composing processes has moved along at least two complementary and sometimes overlapping lines. The first consists of those studies which focus on observations of writers at work (e.g., Emig, 1971; Graves, 1975; Perl, 1979; Pianko, 1979; Stallard, 1974). The second includes those which examine in detail some limited aspect of composing which might suggest evidence for a cognitive/developmental theory of writing or a model of the underlying linguistic competence revealed in the surface features of the written product (e.g., Crowhurst & Piche, 1979; Flower & Hayes, 1980; Kroll, 1978; Rubin & Piche, 1979). This paper reports an attempt to fuse these two lines of inquiry in a study of the revision strategies of twelfth grade students. The behavioral question is, what do twelfth graders do when they revise? The cognitive/developmental question is, are there any differences between the patterns of more successful and less successful twelfth grade writers? A remaining theoretical question is, do these patterns reveal evidence which might be useful for an evolving theory of composing processes? Donald Murray (1968, 1978a, 1978b) emphasizes the importance of revision, asserting, "writing is rewriting," and yet he describes revision as the "least researched, least examined, least understood" (1978a, p. 85) of the writing skills. Believing that writers write to find out what they have to say, he describes three stages through which most writers move: prevision, vision, and revision. Revision 197

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