On Sommers: Student and experienced writers

Ah, the linear model: the college Writing Proficiency Exam (WPE), the SAT, PRAXIS, CBEST, WASL, ad naseum.

I remember having my first essay for the WPE rejected simply because it did not follow the 5-paragraph paradigm, not because I had nothing worthwhile to say--it just didn't fit the mold. Knowing the model is fine, but form can never substitute for content.

One idea in particular got my attention: "The predominant concern in these definitions [of revision] is vocabulary(emphasis mine). The students understand the revision process as a rewording activity...The aim of revision according to the students' own description is therefore to clean up speech..." (emphasis mine).

I confess, I am guilty of communicating wrong ideas about revision. I have done a disservice to those writers. Perhaps part of the problem in my own teaching is the pressure to get students ready for standardized testing, which includes two-point and three-point essay questions. (Love that WASL.)

Upon reflection of Sommmers' article, I see where I should reflect more upon my own revision process, and in such a form that I can apply it to my pedagogy. I am reminded of the workshop I attended with Kelly Gallagher, author of Teaching Adolescent Writers and other titles. He models the metacognative process for the students on his DocuCam, writing and revising, talking to himself aloud for the students' benefit. He does this often in order to keep the revision process in the forefront of their instruction. He also has an ongoing conversation with them about the revision process. He claims that since beginning this kind of teaching, he has seen amazing changes in the depth of his students' revisions.

As to the more experienced writers, I note the idea about "finding the form or shape" in an argument. I will make a leap here and relate this idea to Micheangelo's ideas about sculpture, that "every stone had a sculpture within it, and that the work of sculpting was simply a matter of chipping away all that was not a part of the statue." Just as finding the form hidden in the stone is a process of discovery, so too finding the form of an argument is a discover. Or, from another angle, as one writer Sommers quoted, ideas are "seeds." This perspective taken, it is the job of the writer to discover what kind of "plant" will spring from the seed of the particular argument.