Gilmore Chapter #3: Awk! Frag! (Revising Style)

I think it is true to say that students have been bred to fix the red errors and turn their papers back in and everything will be alright. We have been bred since elementry school to become lazy with revision. First no one wants to rewrite an entire paper after just completing and handing it in. Heck no! That would be the last thing I would want to do. As a result, when teachers only leave grammer suggestions and allow students to make the corrections and resubmit, they are stick to what the teacher wrote on their papers with thier red ink, rather than focusing on the content.

Content is the most important part in writing a paper, in my opinion. Content and effectively expressing the content. Which in my case is the hardest part. I can find, develope, and understand completly what I am writing about, however, effectively writing my arguement or expressing the facts in a nice flowing matter is my persoanl downfall. I took a history class one time and the very well known professor confessed that they had submitted a book they had worked on for years. The publishers didn't care too much about the content, and basically asked for them to redo and resubmit, which in their case meant starting from scratch. OUCH! I guess my point is, I did not find out that it is possible that you might want to start from scratch, in some cases, if you paper isn't effective and the content isn't persuasive.

Revision is important, and it is even more important to teach the different ways and levels of revision. We have to put the stop on the laziness of students and teachers with only stopping with grammer, and start focusing on what really matters, the actual messege the paper is offering!