I’m helping a student revise a paper for another course. Yesterday, we hashed out the paper’s main argument. Today, it was time to start revising.
I separated each of the paper’s paragraphs into a separate page, made the individual sentences in those paragraphs into bulleted lists, and worked through as many paragraphs as we could get through in two hours.
I had five takeaways.
- I was really impressed with the student’s willingness to engage in that intense kind of revision work for two hours.
- I need to do this kind of work (on a smaller scale) with as many of my students as possible. I may institute this as mandatory work for anyone who scores below a certain number on the first essay. It would get them in my office and give me a chance to show them what intense revision looks like.
- The revision happened as part of an actual conversation between the reader and writer. I asked for clarification, and the student asked me questions too. This is ideal.
- It can’t all be like this. The student came in with 3000+ words and something to say as well as the motivation to get the best possible score on the assignment.
- I think it is a way of helping the students learn because it shows that good writing is often collaborative.