The revision process of a student versus an experienced writer seems to be very different. While students seem to complete revision on a “surface level”, experienced writers’ process of revision goes to a much deeper level. As they question the meanings and messages of their work, students seem to just complete revision in an overview type of way, maybe moving around some sentences, changing some words/finding better synonyms, overall just to restate the same message. The experienced writers write with the intention to come back and make another better draft, recollecting their ideas, but that wasn’t really a part of the student writers’ process. Experienced writers also seem to look for issues from a bigger picture looking at the essay as a whole, while students particularly look at specific parts and pieces looking at and resolving “small” issues for example addressing specific comments that a teacher can leave behind, but not the whole essay. Just trying to get across making sure no writing rules they were taught weren’t broken.
I can identify myself with the student version of revision. I can definitely recall the many times when looking back at an essay I have opened up another tab to search “(insert word) synonym” and looked for a better choice of words, to get my message across or reworking a whole paragraph. Yet, not many times I can recall approaching revision as making a whole another draft. Let this be due to the linear process we were taught, differences could be made.
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