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Kenna Guy
Professor Juarez
English 001
December 2, 2013
Using Revision in College Essays
Revision is an important step in the writing process, but sometimes it is a step that is
overlooked. As someone who writes college essays, I find that revision is a very helpful tool in
writing. Though sometimes revision can feel tedious and boring, in the end it is a big help in
finishing an essay. Many scholars believe that this is the case, and that revision should be done
and can be done in different ways. In this paper I hope to show what scholars think about
revision, and how it can be used to produce good work.
As I said before, the revision process can be slow and tedious work, but it is necessary.
Linda Carey reviews, New Essays for Teachers of Writing, by Ronald A. Sudol, and talks
about his thoughts on revision. revising encompasses several different activities: first, we
have sentence-level editing (149). This is where tedious comes into play. Re-reading and
re-reading an essay can be difficult, but it helps catch those small little slip-ups that werent
noticed before. These slip ups especially being grammar. The computer does not fix all of the
mistakes, it does what it thinks is right; which is sometimes wrong. It is important to the
sentence-level editing step in the revision process.
The next step that Sudol states is, polishing of final drafts for mechanical errors of
spelling (149). Getting to that final draft can feel very satisfying, but imagine the horror of
reading a teachers feedback seeing that you have misspelled a word. This is just proving that
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the revision process is never over, even if the draft is considered final. There can always be
more drafts, and these only come about through changes and revision. It can sometimes be
difficult to spot the misspelled words when reading through the final draft; that is why it is
always important to have someone else read through it. Sometimes fresh eyes can see something
you missed.
Sudol goes on with another step in revision, punctuation and syntax and for
appropriate word choice (149). The best way to check on punctuation is to read through the
essay, and then again have a fresh pair of eyes to also read through the essay. For making sure of
the word choice, read the essay out loud. This is also considered a good tool when in the
revision process. Carlton Clark talks about listening revision in his work, Teaching English in
the Two Year College. He talks about recording someone reading the essay and then playing it
back, listening and making changes to the work (1). There are a lot of different methods of
revision that would help to check the appropriate word choice that Sudol talks about.
The next activity in revision that Sudol discusses is, paragraph-level writing to tighten
coherence and logical structuring (149). This step again would be thought of as tedious. The
best way to accomplish this task is to travel paragraph by paragraph through the essay making
sure that every single one is strong and ready to be graded. The best thing about these steps is
that none of them are useless, each step gets you closer and closer to a completed revision.
Now according to Sudol, we are just one step away from completing the revision process.
The last step is, major rewriting or rethinking of ideas within a paper which may produce a
final version radically different from the original draft. (149). This last step seems like all of the
steps encompassed into one. Hopefully by the time you reach this step, all of the radical changes
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have already been made. This is not the only method for revision it is just one mans opinion.
But, I think that it is a nicely laid out plan for people who need structure in their revision.
Sudol talks a lot about going through and re-reading sentence by sentence, or paragraph
by paragraph. The little punctuation mistakes and spelling errors all go under the definition of
revision by editing. Devan Cook talks about his experience with editing and revision in his
work, Teaching English in the Two Year College. We usually teach editing and revision
separately, and we rarely teach punctuation as a rhetorical move. Underlying both of these
common practices is the assumption that editing has no purpose other than a cosmetic,
conventional, window-dressing correctness. But what I learned while teaching a recent first-
year writing class has led me to question this assumption, after a punctuation assignment led the
class to experiment with editing punctuation for a dual purpose as a revision heuristic as well as
for correctness (1). Cook feels that editing isnt just fixing little mistakes, it is also part of the
revision process. Revision can be as simple as changing a sentence or fixing a spelling error, but
it is revision none the less.
Another opinion on revision is from, Jill Fitzgerald, who has interesting sources in her
essay on revision, Research on Revision in Writing. Revision is significant partly because
under certain circumstances it may enhance quality of final written work and partly because,
when writers use revision to rework thoughts and ideas, it may powerfully affect writers
knowledge. Revision enables writers to muddle through and organize what they know in order
to find a line of argument, to learn a new, and to discover what is known before (149). The
reoccurring theme in most of the scholars opinions is that revision will help rework thoughts and
ideas, completely redefining the essay in the end. The reason this theme is reoccurring is
because it is the truth. Revision, when done correctly, can rework an entire essay, making
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changes and coming up with new ideas. I think that Fitzgeralds statement has done a brilliant
job of defining the importance of revision as a whole, and showing that it is a necessary step in
the writing process.
One of the most important tools that helps with revision is feedback. Now the feed back
can come from peers or teachers. It is good to have a sense of what other people think of your
work, then see with your own opinion how to move on from there. Jill Fitzgerald agrees with
this point, Findings tend to suggest that feedback can enhance revision especially if the
feedback is focused and part of a wider instructional program (495). When in a classroom
setting, it is helpful to get feedback from peers. But, there is something different about the
feedback from the teacher. The things the teacher says are more helpful in a sense, and more
confident. Unlike getting feedback from peers, everyone is either confused about the
assignment, or doesnt care. The main point is that feedback is probably the first step to revision,
and the most important.
Hearing what a peer or teacher has to say about your essay is useful, but also hearing
your essay can be useful. The best thing about revision is that it can be done in many different
ways. Clark Carlton talks about a listening type of revision in his article, Listening Revision.
After completing the three step process of listening to a recording of someone reading the essay,
taking notes, and making those changes that stood out, Carlton found a lot of mistakes in his
writing. Some of my sentences just flat out did not make sense, which really surprised me
considering when I proofread my essay I thought everything sounded good and everything
flowed together. In listening to my recording I was interested to see the number of times where
my thought had not actually made it onto the page.
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Sometimes it is hard to sit down with an essay that you wrote a week ago, and go through
and completely revise it. When there is a lot of pressure on the revision and using the essay in a
presentation, or as the tipping point of a class grade, it can be difficult to complete the job. Jill
Fitzgerald goes on to talk about stressful goals in writing that block revision, Results of one
case study of a dissertation writer suggest that the revision process actually may be blocked
when presentation-related goals are in conflict, or take precedence over, expression-of-content
learning goals (489). When a project has both an essay and a presentation portion, almost
everyone is going to be worried about the presentation more than the essay. This is just natural
human instinct, because most people have stage fright and want to be prepared. The best thing to
do in this situation is to get the essay done early, then slowly revise it as the project goes on.
Studies have shown that there are specific aspects that can impact the revision process.
Some evidence supports a relationship between reading ability and selected aspects of the
revision process. Beach (1984) found a significant positive relationship between students'
reading ability and the degree of students' specificity regarding their goals and intentions for the
composition process (Fitzgerald 469). This makes complete sense. If someone doesnt read a
lot of literature, writing can be difficult all together. But in this study, Beach is saying that it
directly affects the revision process. Mainly because without that amount of extra reading,
students can fall into the swing of things and not see different types of writing. What you read
can affect your type of writing, the same goes with revision.
In conclusion, we see that revision is very important to the writing process. The scholars
have stated that revision can completely re-work, edit, and overall make the main idea of the
essay stronger and more prominent. There are also important and interesting ways of completing
the revision, such as: feedback from peers and teachers, listening to a recording of your own
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essay, and taking it one sentence at a time. This research has helped me gain a new outlook on
the revision process. The scholars have proven that revision is an important step in the writing
process, and have given out all of the information needed in completing that step with
confidence.














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Work Cited:
Cook, Devan. Revising Editing. Teaching English in the Two Year College 29.2 (2001): 154.
Proquest. Web. 3 Nov. 2013.
Fitzgerald, Jill. Research on Revision in Writing. Review of Educational Research 57.4 (1987):
485-506. Web. 25 Nov. 2013.
Carlton, Clark. Listening Revision. Teaching English in the Two Year College 40.2 (2012):
195. Proquest. Web. 3 Nov. 2013.
Carey, Linda. Rev. of Revising: New Essays for Teachers of Writing, by Ronald A. Sudol.
Taylor & Frances 13.2 (1983): 149-55