Lauren Martin & Claire Pouliot

On p. 65 Ortmeier-Hooper asserts that we dont teach revision (of writing) very well. Do
you agree? Why and how should we teach revision?

Most student writers do not know how to revise their papers (Ortmeier-Hooper, 65). We
agree with this quote from the ELL Writer by Christina Ortmeier-Hooper that students do not
know how to revise papers well enough to make a difference in the final draft. It is important for
students to know how to revise papers. The students have this idea that revising a paper
consists of editing the grammatical and spelling errors. In an ELLs perspective revising papers
can be more difficult as well if not taught the correct methods. ELL stands for english language
learners. ELL students spend school hours learning the english language. Not only do ELL
students struggle with revising, english speaking students like ourselves struggle as well.
Teachers need to find ways to teach revision in a more effective way than they are doing now.
In our paper we will discuss how English students as well as ELL students struggle with
revision, how teachers are lacking the education on revision to students and also how students
can become better at revising.
Revising papers has become primarily the act of editing. Students are focused on fixing
grammatical and spelling errors. Although these types of errors need to be fixed in order to turn
in a well-written paper, teachers are looking for more in depth corrections from their draft to their
final paper. Correcting small errors does little changing to a paper. On page 64-65 Christina
Ortmeirer-Hooper states students change a single word, or rewrite a single sentence, and
correct the use of commas. This is not an effective way to revise a paper. There is a difference
between editing and revising. If we were to edit a paper, we would go through the paper and
edit spelling and grammatical errors, but if we were to revise a paper, we would add, change, or
delete the content of the paper.
As far as our experience goes with revising papers, we do not have much. In high school
grammar was so stressed that we lost the revision aspect of writing. We always had the same
grammar lessons that were repeated year after year, yet the revision lessons ceased to exist
after the first lesson. We asked ourselves why we focus so much on grammar when we revise
our own or other peers paper. The answer is that we, and we believe other students believe that
if the grammar and spelling is correct to perfection in their paper there is no way they can get a
bad grade. Having little to no grammatical errors in a paper adds a lot of credibility to a paper
and we believe its almost brings a distraction to the teacher about the content versus small
errors. Being responsible for revising others papers we begin to question our own credibility to
be give feedback on someone's paper, do we really know what we are doing? Are we making a
difference to better an essay? Our revision experiences in high school as well as college are
even pretty limited. For example, in this class we are given papers to peer edit and revise as
well as turn our papers over to other students and have them edited and revised for us. We
never know what we are going to get back because there are some who were taught how to
revise well and others who have not the slightest clue. Some papers come back with
grammatical corrections and a statement that says, Great start. This leaves us questioning
how we can make our papers better with more content and support. We understand that we are
very guilty of this as well, but it is easy to go through a paper and correct just the grammar
aspect of the paper. Not fully analyzing the paper does not benefit the final product. Therefore,
some knowledge of revision needs to be taught earlier on to help everyone develop writing skills
and well-written products.
Another example of a hindrance to the revision process can be a required word count.
While students are focusing on making the word requirement, it can drawback from the content
of the paper and the revision process. If something should not be included in a papers final
draft because it is unnecessary or off topic, yet the student does not want to get rid of it because
of a required word count, this can definitely kill the quality of a final product. A way of getting
around the word count that can be useful to students is quotes of support from a book or
scholarly work and explaining in depth why these quotes support their argument in the paper.
This is one way that we got around word counts on papers in the past. This system of support
and explanation can really strengthen and lengthen their paper is used correctly. For example,
this paper has a requirement of twenty three hundred words which has been extremely hard for
us. We have been adding words by support and explanation, but there is only so much support
and explanation a student can account for on a single topic. So, this brings us to the question,
why do teachers put a word count on certain papers? Is it because they want us to think and
be able to elaborate on our thoughts a bit more? Or is it because they feel we should be able to
compose a longer essay? We know it cannot be because they want to grade lengthier papers.
Word counts can sometimes hinder the paper as well as what the paper can benefit from the
revision process, especially if something needs to be cut from the paper. A page count might be
more beneficial to students because they have more wiggle room towards their papers. A
student can become extremely overwhelmed with a word count especially if they accidentally go
over one word, like one of us did in a previous paper in this class. She lost a total of twenty
percent of her grade on the paper. This can be stressful. A page count would give a student
more room to elaborate or not if they think that their paper is finished. In one of our previous
classes we had a professor who gave a ton of wiggle room where the requirement was five to
seven pages and this was a lot of free reign for us students. We believe if teachers were to
change to a page count instead of word counts, even if it was not a range of pages and just a
single page, this could help students out to make better papers through the revision process.
The students would not focus so much on word count, but more on content.
In the revision process ELL writers have a harder time revising papers because of their
fear of messing up. Many ELL writers are hesitant to correct and adjust papers because they
are already at a disadvantage with the small language barrier. As ELL students are required to
peer review papers they can be overwhelmed with emotions of fear, Ortmeier-Hooper says,
Many adolescent ELL writers are particularly fearful of revision (Ortmeier-Hooper 65). These
students have many reasons to be fearful considering everything they do to learn how to put the
language together efficiently and then again in writing. In the fear of making a mistake during
revision and embarrassing themselves by not completely understanding the english language,
ELL students hesitate to give feedback to others and revise their own papers. The english
language is not an easy language to learn when in elementary school, even sometimes we, as
english speaking students, mess up on our grammar and formulating ideas into a paper. In the
book, she states, If one considers the time and effort that these writers put into just generating
the words for their text, trying to reach a certain page count, and finding the right vocabulary, it
is no wonder that the cringe in fear when we speak of revamping entire paragraphs, expanding
to add new material, and even worse, deleting sections that may no longer work (Ortmeier-
Hooper 65). The average student may take advantage how comfortable they are with structuring
a paper, they are so familiar with how a paper should be and ELL students struggle with
comprehending basic things in a paper such as paragraphs, forming sentences, and
vocabulary. ELL students are typically reluctant while reviewing other students papers. Many
ELL writers are unsure how writers go about reseeing instead they think of terms of errors and
fixing (Ortmeier-Hooper 64). ELL students should be more confident in their feedback on
papers, their perspective on the topic could make the paper more enhanced. ELLs worry that if
they review someone elses paper that they will not be correct in what they tell these student.
Also in editing their own papers they may not want to change anything that they have already
written because they worked so hard to get where they are already. It may be discouraging to
have to change and revise what they already thought was great work. As ELL students are
learning English they become more confident in their suggestions to papers.
There are many different ways someone could teach their students revision and critical
thinking. Teachers need to be aware of the students abilities of revising a paper. Teachers
should analyze students strengths and weaknesses when revising a paper. Even though
students appreciate other peers reviews it is typically a teachers comments that are the most
beneficial to a student's paper. Teachers give back more about content feedback and start
asking questions about support and detail in order to get the paper to full potential. If students
were able to give feedback like the teachers can, each paper would shine with great content.
Saying that, is it fair to hold a student to such high standards or should it still be a teachers role
to provide the best revision? If the teacher is the one grading the paper in the end, of course the
student will listen to the teacher over a student even if he or she agrees with the peer revision
over the teachers revision. It is all about taking risks with writing, as we talked about in lecture
as well as recitation, many students are afraid to take a risk in school when they know if they
played it safe they can get an A. We have both struggled with making hard decisions about
school projects and papers. We have been put into a situation when we think our risk will benefit
our grade and impress the teacher, but in the end we have been shot down by teachers and
had to suffer with a lower grade than expected. If students want to avoid taking such risks but
continue to learn how to revise paper they should start asking questions like so what while
they are revising a paper. I usually ask my students to do this a few times throughout a given
writing project, as a way of having them check in on their own writing goals and intentions. The
goal is to help them see how their thinking and hopefully their writing has deepened over time
(Ortmeier-Hooper 68). This is a good way for students to set goals for themselves in writing and
to keep track of how much they have progressed and how their writing has matured over time.
As students we personally struggle revising other students papers as well as our own and
asking the so what question can really grasp our thoughts and progress on a certain paper. A
method that our recitation teacher, Carolyn Albracht, has on revision has been quite helpful to
us in our revision process. She says that when she revises someone elses paper for them she
tries to ask questions about the topics and suggest places you can look to find expert opinions
to back up your support. She also says that she tries not to tell people to add or delete specific
things. We like this method of revising because this way we can get someone to think about
other things they can say in support of what they are trying to argue in their paper. Students can
really benefit from asking these types of questions when revising a paper. These questions can
add the extra content needed to complete a well-written paper.
During the revision process of this paper, we asked our peers about the content of our
paper. It was kind of an ironic step because we were writing our paper on revision. But asking
questions about the content and what could make our revision step benefit the paper definitely
helped in our revision process. We may have gotten better feedback on this paper mainly
because it is about revision, but that is okay. Asking questions over the content definitely helped
in the revision process of this paper compared to other papers we have written on other topics.
It is true that many students struggle with revision and many teachers are not teaching
revision in an effective way. As students continue to peer revise and edit more papers they will
get more comfortable with correcting and commenting on content as well as grammar and
spelling. As students continue to develop revision skills they will be able to make better writers
out of themselves. Not only will revision help on a personal level, but another person will benefit
from the feedback given. It is true that students are lacking skills of revision and need to be
taught in a better way. As teachers learn how to teach revision to their students, everyone will
be able to benefit from the outcome of well-written papers. Teachers will start seeing more
growth in their students writing styles as they start teaching revision in a more effective way.