Sommers, Bruffee, and Revision

“Revision Strategies of Student Writers and Experienced Adult Writers”

--Nancy Sommers

“Revision Strategies” is a critique of the linear model of writing, which manifests in classrooms via a modes-based instructional approach.  According to Sommers, a key flaw in this model is its inability to address revision in a meaningful way—the linear model is based on speech, and speech does not afford possibilities for revision.  To address a gap in revision-related research, Sommers conducted a study of revision practices as articulated by two distinct groups: first-year college writers and experienced adult writers.  Her findings point to the following trends:

Student Writers

·      Revision is understood primarily as a “rewording activity” ” (Sommers 326) as opposed to a “re-view” of the work (Sommers 327) 

·      Ideas are assumed to be complete and pre-formed in the mind; writing is simply an act of finding the proper wording to put them on the page

·      Students make changes according to a set of rules that may have little bearing on the specific rhetorical situation of the text they’re creating

·      “Because students do not see revision as an activity in which they modify and develop perspectives and ideas, they feel that if they know what they want to say, then there is little reason for making revisions” (Sommers 327).

·      End point: students need different revision strategies; a different approach to revision

Adult writers

·      Frame their revisions as an act of finding the form of an argument

·      Consider their reader when revising

·      Approach revision as part of a process of discovery (discovering meaning)

·      “The experienced writers imagine a reader (reading their product) whose existence and whose expectations influence their revision process.  They have abstracted the standards of a reader and this reader seems to be partially a reflection of themselves and functions as a critical and productive collaborator—a collaborator who has yet to love their work” (Sommers 329) 

The notable contrast between the first-year college writers and established professional ones struck me  as an instructor.  If these patterns hold today, that’s quite the gap to pedagogically bridge.  For myself, I see an interesting potential answer in Bruffee’s “Collaborative Learning and the ‘Conversations of Mankind.’”  This essay speaks to the idea of normal discourse (the accepted paradigms, conventions, conversations, values, assumptions of a community of knowledgeable peers) and abnormal discourse (whereas normal discourse maintains knowledge, abnormal discourse may generate it; it’s the space where a breakdown of consensus can lead to a revolutionary breakthrough or dismissible gibberish).  Bruffee argues that collaborative learning creates the necessary context for students to learn and practice normal discourse. Because every student has some kind of knowledge or experience, together they can combine their efforts to enter a given community (Bruffee puts it better: “mastery of a knowledge community’s normal discourse is the basic qualification for acceptance into that community” [552]).

So to connect Sommers and Bruffee, I’ll ask another question about the revision gap and how to bridge it.  If teaching is a matter of providing the social context necessary for effective knowledge-sharing and knowledge-generating conversation; if it’s a matter of facilitating familiarity with the normal discourse of our field, then how do we do all that?  How do we encourage student writers to approach and conduct and talk about revision like experienced writers? 

I wonder if looking to a model of revision is a way to go. An accessible model of revision-in-context that hits the points highlighted by Sommers: revision as an act of finding form; revision with the reader as a considered partner. 

My idea from the night (and this is hazy) comes from my experiences with some of the stand-up comedians here in the Fargo-Moorhead area.  There is a sizeable group of regulars and as I’ve been going to their shows for over a year and half now, I’ve had a kind of longitudinal chance to see the way some of them continually revise their sets, and it seems to me the good ones (I’m going to define “the good ones” by who I think is funny) hit the same notes as Sommers’s experienced writers.  In fact, since the stand-up set is a live genre, I would say comics are a more accessible example of a writer who revised with the audience in mind—the audience is right there, giving (or withholding) some kind of public response.  Not loving it yet, perhaps.  Maybe never.      

It would be interesting to talk in detail with some of the comics about their approaches to revision for two reasons: one, to see how they articulate the process (so a Sommers-esque approach) and two, to see if their processes could be translated or transformed into a pedagogical tool in the writing classroom.