Think Piece #5

In this week’s reading, Chapter 7, in Best Practices in Writing Instruction, revising was the focus point. Revising is a very important step in the writing process and is beneficial for the student to participate in. “Revising is a way to learn about the craft of writing” (p. 141). It doesn’t only occur after the writing has been completed, but often throughout the writing process. Students are always looking to go back and change and edit their ideas. Not all students are excellent writers so the revising step can help them enhance what they have already written.

“Peer revising is a common feature of writing-process classrooms, and it is often recommended as a way of providing student writers with an audience of readers who can respond to their writing, identify strengths and problems and recommend improvements” (p 146). I always loved the peer editing step of the writing process because I need feedback from others to provide confidence as well as constructive criticism of my writing. I agree that peer revising is more efficient than group revising because more can be accomplished when two people are trading papers, as opposed to an entire group.

On page 151, steps to a peer revising strategy are as follows:

1.      Listen while the author reads the paper

2.      Tell what the paper was about and what you liked best about it

3.      Read the story and ask the evaluation questions

4.      Discuss the evaluation and ways to make the paper better

5.      Author makes changes.

I think these are great steps for students to follow. The students provide positive feedback about what they liked best and then they have the opportunity to give constructive criticism. I like how the students have the chance to discuss what they think, not just write it down or “grade” their papers and hand it back. Whenever students can talk and discuss their writing, ideas and processes, the better writer a student becomes. The author also has the final decision so if they completely disagree with their peer, there is no pressure to have to change what they have written.

This chapter also talked about the use of Word Processing. There are both advantages and disadvantages to using programs such as Microsoft Word to write. I think students, especially at the early levels, should practice writing first drafts by hand and editing and revising on their own or with a peer. When you sit down to type a paper, Word corrects spelling and grammar and I think students often take advantage of this. I believe computers are great for final drafts and it is much easier for the teacher to read something typed, but I think it also promotes laziness in young students’ writing motivation.

I think revising is very important for writers of all ages because they need the time to go back and reflect on what they have written. There are always changes that could be made, whether it adding more detail, changing sentence structures, or even making sure such things as capitalization and punctuation are correct. The writing process should be taught at a young age so students don’t think that they write something and then they are done with it right after. Even adults who write should still practice editing and revising. Adults make mistakes too and if you have a friend or colleague look over your work, they are most likely going to see something different than you, the writer.