Project I

Final Draft
As we all have acknowledged that revision has played a major part in our English class this past week, personally I have learned so many things of which I was not aware of. Not only does revision deal with the student revising his/ her essay but it also consists of the teacher or audience reading and editing the essay.
After reading and relating the articles to myself I now have different view of revision. I don’t really recall my early years of writing but as far back as I can remember I started to enjoy writhing in when I began attending middle school. Through out the beginning of my writing in middle school I also believe that revision consisted strictly only of grammar editing. In the article “I’ll do it my way; three writers and their revision practices.” By Stephanie Dix, it states that “the ability to revise is significant because it helps the writer reflect and clarify his or her thinking with the goal of improving the writing.” (566) After reading this article I realize that behind revision there is a lot more than merely grammar revision. Revision wasn’t such a great deal back in middle school but as I entered high school I noticed a dramatic change with in revision. In high school I have sever English teachers. As far back as I can recall my teachers never really revised my papers to the point where they wanted me to change the entire thing. They always seemed to focus more on the order structure of my essay. They always told me that the sequence in which I set my essay was crucial. Not one of my teachers told me that part of revision was also to improve your writing and be the ability to take criticism.


After learning this and reading the article by Stephanie Dix I related myself to Anna.
The article states “Anna revised and composed basing her text on a skeleton framework and then adding in and building up the ideas and images that she desires...” (572) now I set up my essay and start to build it up from what I have writing down on paper. Throughout my life time I have know people that to their misfortune, the teacher would change everything in their paper and make them right it the way she wanted to see it. I have always believed that there’s no point in doing such type of revision. What would be the point in having the student write a paper if the teacher will end up writing it all over again? In the article by Andrea Muldoon it is stated by a student “she doesn’t understand what I’m trying to say,” “she doesn’t share my interests and appreciate my writing.” (67) These are the thoughts that students normally get when the teachers changes everything they wrote. There was a point where I stared to question revision and why we had to do it. I thought that there was no point to it; I began to believe that if the person was a bad writer then there was absolutely no remedy to it until I entered college. I started of with an English professor who greatly enforced the revision process in her class. The last day of class she sat down with me and explained that I was a good writer but that I could improve myself if only my stronger and if I followed the commentary she wrote on my essays. When got around to doing as she advised I compared the revised essay with one of my former papers and saw a great difference. I could right away identify what she was trying to get across.


Revision now has become a major part of my writing. I must always have someone proofread my paper and point out my subconscious mistakes. The article by Bardine and Fulton states that “when writing revision memos student’s detail, the strengths and weaknesses they see in the new draft, their revision focus for future drafts, and the particular changes they made to their current draft.” Revision memos are also a very useful technique to learn to revise your own paper; at this point of my English education not only will it help me in my English classes but also in the career I am pursuing. Revision should be something enforced into the early writing as we being the writing quest.