Sommers. "Revision Strategies of Student Writers & Experienced Adult Writers"

Sommers, Nancy. “Revision Strategies of Student Writers and Experienced Adult Writers.” College Composition and Communication 34.1 (Dec. 1980): 378-88. Sommers analyzes differences between how students, or inexperienced writers, and experienced writers revise. The two sets of writers used different strategies and terminology to describe what they did, with students relying on word level changes and experienced writers making more global changes in addition to word level changes. In Sommers’ research, “the only modification of ideas in the students’ essays occurred when they tried out two or three introductory paragraphs” (382); all other revisions students made were at the word level. The student writers indicate in interviews that they refrain from making larger revisions because they lack strategies for making global revisions. In contrast, the experienced writers use first drafts to discover meaning and find their focus or argument.

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