Learning Outcome 1
From my experience of revising this semester, I can agree with Nancy Sommers that most students revise by rewording. I personally like to gather all of my ideas. And then I would change the words from being basic to more intellectual words. After having all of my ideas down, as a first draft, just like the the writer in Sommers selections. Based on the peer reviews and feedback I received from my peers and professor Miller on my fist draft is how I approach my official second draft. I review to see where I can expand more and add more details, sentence placement, to finish up and compose my second draft. I would repeat that same step again, changing sentences from the top to bottom or vice versa and re reading over my second draft and deleting or adding more important details. To complete my final draft I usually re read again and go over spellings, grammar and punctuations. Sommers states that “student writers constantly struggle to bring their essays into congruence with a predefined meaning” (Sommers 1980). I can agree with that because I personally struggled with that. Defining one meaning was hard because to me, I can see more than just one. But, Sommers also said “two elements of the experienced writers’ theory of the revision process are the adoption of a holistic perspective and the perception that revision is a recursive process” (Sommers 1980). I used both methods while revising this semester. While I revise to reword I also revise to get a new idea and expand my writing. While deleting, and adding to my second draft I am revising like an experience writer, Sommers states that, “details are added, dropped, substituted, or reordered according to their sense of what the essay needs for emphasis and proportion” (Sommers 1980). That leads me to have a changed vision of my writing and compose what was not there before while deleting what is no longer important.
