SQR3

Lisa Marie Lopez
English 1301
Ms. Phan
September 13,2010
Revision Strategies of Student Writers and Experienced Adult Writers
Nancy Sommers. “Revision Strategies of Student Writers and Experienced Adult Writers”. College Composition and Communication, Vol. 31, NO. 4 (Dec., 1980), pp. 378-388
Summary:
The article that was written by Nancy Sommers talks about the meaning of revision and how it differs between a student writer and an experienced adult writer. She speaks of how the process of revision has changed. In this article, Sommers compares and contrasts the difference between speech and writing. The article says that speech cannot be revised like something that is written. Nancy talks about how she analyzed student writers and how their way of revision is very different from that of experienced writers. The student writers mainly focused on the revision of words. They thought that taking out, adding, and switching high vocabulary words would help revise and edit their essay paper. Nancy realized that the students worried too much about repeating themselves. She analyzed that the students tend to revise their work, but end up skipping errors that have been created on their paper. Nancy realized that the students worried too much about repeating themselves. The reason why students tend to ignore or overlook an error is because they can’t seem to “hear” the mistake they have made. The process in which a person can actually spot the mistake is when they diagnose and dig deep to find the problem. Basically, the inexperienced students tend to have tunnel vision, meaning that they keep things simple and follow basic rules. Student writers don’t think outside the box like experienced writers. The article talks about how experienced writers go into depth with their revising and editing.
Question:
What is the purpose for this article? Does it teach you anything?
The purpose for this article is that it is written to inform people about the difference of a student writer and an experienced writer. Its purpose is also so that the reader could get some tips and help with whatever is needed to revise and edit their paper. This article shows the mistakes that students make when revising and editing their essays and it also gives examples and some details on the ways student writers and the experienced writers work. One thing from the article that describes the ways of a student writer would be when the student ignores his or her mistakes. This helps the reader understand that we must look carefully when we write our essays. The article teaches me so much because it explains to me how students tend to be very ignorant and tend to have some mistakes on their essay. Another teaching that the article shows us is how the experienced writer digs deep within and gets a story out of many things. Experienced writers are very open minded and creative, while the “student writer has tunnel vision and they tend to keep things simple and follow basic rules.”