Teacher Resources: Things That Work

REWRITES
by Bob Roecklein

A technique that I have employed on occasion with the weaker students is allowing a rewrite opportunity. What I may do, during the early to middle part of the term, is to respond to a couple of versions of the student's rough draft, on the same assignment, in succession. This usually requires allowing the student a brief extension on the final draft deadline. The object of this exercise is to help the student to recognize the several sequential steps that good revision work involves. When a student has handed in chronically superficial rough drafts, revision may appear fruitless. However, if the reviewer (the teacher in this case) sustains a responsiveness to a couple of versions of the rough draft, then there is a chance that the student will acquire a sense of what the rough draft needs to accomplish.

I resort to this method, definitely a 1-time deal in any given semester, with those weaker students whose rough drafts simply do not achieve the level of raw material that reasonable revising presupposes. Usually the first set of revisions concerns actually locating textual passages that are relevant to the rough draft discussion, and simply getting them into the paper. This step encourages the student to begin to prioritize in the area of idea development, to emphasize certain concepts through the choice of quotes and to abandon others. The second revision is frequently concerned with making it clear to the student writer, what developing a conversation with an author actually means. Such as, ‘here I see some reaction on your part to the text, but it is not brought into contact with any of the quotes which you have selected'...

As I say, this more rigorous revision process is time consuming and it is one to be employed quite selectively. It would also be ill-advised to resort to this method for more than 1, or at most 2 assignments. The goal is to acquaint the student, the very weak writer, more intimately with the steps that are involved in composing viable rough drafts and in executing successful revision. Perhaps if a student is led through such a revision process once, by the numbers, and is able to see the changes emerge in their own work, they will begin to internalize the standards.