Teaching Revision as an Act of Voice and Agency
Excerpt
Many of us have asked students to “peer revise” with a rubric or apply an acronym to a draft in an attempt to help them manage the messy process of revision. Or we have simply told students to revise without much direction at all. But, in treating revision as a procedure to complete rather than an opportunity to rethink and reshape writing in community, students become adept at following a set of directions to produce writing in exchange for a grade, and they remain students, not writers. What we have written about here is a layered approach to teaching revision in a community of writers. Throughout this process, students strengthen their ability to read, respond to, and talk about writing as they reread, rethink, and rewrite. Because the common goals of developing a skill or producing a “better” text are subordinated to the collaborative process of inquiry into ideas, students gain a sense of connection to each other as thinkers and writers.
Mazura, Christopher, Jacqueline Rapant, Mary Sawyer. “Teaching Revision as an Act of Voice and Agency.” English Journal 107.3 (2018) 81-86. Copyright ©2018 by the National Council of Teachers of English. Reprinted with permission.
