The Bedford Guide (pages 45-54):
Hmmm, have we read this before? I am definitely noticing all the overlap in the concepts of course, as well as in this week's intended learning objective of 'style vs. error'.
The reading was about two types of revisions-- global revisions and sentence-level revisions. Just to clarify and reiterate what I took from the readings, global revisions consist of two parts-- development and organization. I think development could almost be a revision type of its own because it refers to the formulation of ideas, main points, support, connections, and analysis. The organization component of global revisions is about how the parts of development listed above are all sort of glued together in a productive and successful way. I think the organization component is really the bridge between developmental revisions and sentence-level revisions. Lately I feel as though the other readings (like Cazort's book) as well as class discussions are starting to limit a degree of importance and attention towards sentence-level revisions. I mentioned in class, a lot of these readings and ideas fail to really acknowledge that some writers need to constantly fix sentence-level mistakes as subconscious means in correcting their underlying ideas. Basically what I mean is that some people aren’t capable of organizing their overall ideas when their wording and sentence structure is in state of disarray.
On a final note about this particular reading, pages 49 and 50 offer "other suggestion for global revision". The first states to "read the paper as naive reader and indicate those places where it needs more details". My opinion is that this actually much, much more difficult below the surface. Changing perspective is not an easy task and that was never really acknowledged by the authors. Secondly, they suggest periodic breaks by paragraph or section to "summarize" or "explain what you anticipate will follow". I have nothing against this point-- I think it’s something that is pretty automatic at this stage in our academic careers, yet nonetheless, it doesn't hurt to reiterate. Thirdly, among the authors "other suggestions for global revision" is "don't overwhelm the writing with too many suggestions for improvement at one time". This third suggestion really rang a bell in my mind, because it definitely correlates to my previous post about how one of the Writing Center consultants telling me how he sometimes comes across working with frustrated writers. I also thought back to working with the high school student from the College Mentoring Program. I definitely could tell that I overwhelmed her at some points. I think basic human nature is what indicates the point of ‘overwhelmedness’.
Hjortshoj (chapter 7):
I'll only mention a few brief points on this reading, as I have just realized that this post is starting to turn into a brief novel.
The chapter is called “Writing in Reference to Others” and to broadly put it, the chapter covers how perception and reference relate to one another. I never realized the significance wording has in deciphering which idea, point, or summary belongs to whom—the writer or the reference. We saw this in last Wednesday’s class when reviewing the article essay draft of the week.
While I could go on and on about everything Hjortshoj writes about, I’d just like to make the basic point that this reading (as do many other chapters we’ve read by Hjortshoj) tie into the notion of THEORY. After all, this course is called Introduction to Composition THEORY and Pedagogy. I think that sometimes we all forget that concepts and rules of the process of writing that are actually set in stone are incredibly minimal. There is not a defined way to write something-- in fact we call replicating another word as plagiarism. The majority of the writing process is and will always continue to be evolving and changing. Thus, I think it’s important to use this reading to reinforce what we often forget—there is rarely a right or wrong way to write; style and error may conflict, but in the end, the final product belongs to the writer and is dependent on the audience (if one even is intended to exist).
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