Comments on Empowering Revision by Nicholas Coles

Coles begins his argument explaining that novice writers do not like to revise their work like experienced writers do.  He describes how the act of revising for the inexperienced writer is just fixing surface errors and making different word choices where as the more seasoned writer is willing to let go of their first draft and make changes to the meaning of the paper.  Coles suggests giving students subjects they have a stake in and will want to write about.  The author talks about how experienced writers revise their work to generate knowledge and to have something to say about a subject. Coles goal is to get the student to shift from not only writing about general things, but also being more particular. The author then talks about two methods (feedback from peers and teacher comments) that help his students achieve this goal. 

I think Coles approach fits into Bartholomae and Petrosky’s course because it immerses the students into an academic discussion with their peers.  The peer feedback method made me think of students having the chance to test out their writing on the audience they are writing to.  It is like getting a taste of your audience’s reaction to aid your revision. I would like to include this type of activity into my unit plan. My only reservation is that not all of the students would have the opportunity to have their paper up for discussion, but I still think the students would learn from this activity because they get a sense of the audience they are writing to and it prevents them from the thought that the teacher is the one and only audience of my paper. After this exercise I think would be a good time for the instructor to initiate a little discussion about audience. I think the teacher comments are also beneficial to students revising their papers because it encourages them to actively read their own papers.  They are analyzing them to find what is significant (something they should be doing in all their readings) and making sure they are conveying that which is significant in the writing.  Through my feedback as an instructor I would want to foster my students in expressing what they want their readers to understand from reading their papers.