Using a single-subjects-with-replicates design, this study investigated conference influence on first graders' knowledge about revision as well as revision activity. Sixteen children participated in group writing conferences with a teacher, in a natural classroom setting, every other week from February through June. Data from three baseline points and seven conference points were summarized. At conference data collection points, students wrote, conferred in groups with a teacher, were interviewed about potential revisions, and revised work in progress. At baseline points, the same events occurred, but there were no conferences. Two main variables were used to evaluate knowledge of the revision process: number of spots suggested for revision and average specificity of suggested changes. The main variable for actual revision activity was total number of revisions made. Final drafts were also rated for quality. Conferences did influence revision knowledge and revision activity for many children. However, the extent of conference influence was mediated by certain entry level student characteristics. Generally, the most positive effects occurred for students who began with the least amount of knowledge about revision, who were initially doing the least amount of revision, and who were initially writing pieces judged among the lowest in quality.

time, encouragement, and craft of two master teachers and writers-are attitudes and skills that extend beyond poetry and fiction writing. To value self-investment, to avoid premature closure, to see revision as discovery, to go beyond the predictable, to risk experimentation, and, above all, to trust your own creative power are necessary for all good writing, whether it is a freshman theme, a poem, a term paper, or a 4 C's paper. Yet in academic writing, except perhaps for the dissertation, these are not integral to the pedagogy. Few of us reward risk-taking that fails with a better grade than polished but pedestrian texts. We are more product-oriented, judging assignments as independent of one another rather than as part of a collective and ongoing body of work. No wonder that students interpret our message as Be careful, not creative!

A belief shared by teachers of writing, one that we fervently try to inculcate in our students, is that revision can improve writing. This notion, that revision generally results in better text, often pairs up with another assumption, that revision occurs as we work through separate drafts. Thus, hand in your working drafts tomorrow and the final ones next Friday is a common assignment, as is the following bit of textbook advice: the draft is completed, a good critical reading should help the writer re-envision the essay and could very well lead to substantial rewriting (Axelrod and Cooper 10). This textbook advice, hardly atypical, is based on the rationale that gaining distance from a piece of discourse helps the writer to judge it more critically. As evidence for this assumption, Richard Beach's 1976 study of the self-evaluation strategies of revisers and nonrevisers demonstrated that extensive revisers were more capable of detaching themselves and gaining aesthetic distance from their writing than were nonrevisers. Nancy Sommers' later theoretical work on revision also sensitized us to students' need to re-see their texts rather than to view revision as an editing process at the limited level of word changes. A logical conclusion, then, is to train student writers to re-see and then redraft a piece of discourse. There are other compelling reasons for helping students view first or working drafts as fluid and not yet molded into final form. The opportunities for outside intervention, through teacher critiques and suggestions or peer evaluation sessions, can be valuable. And it is equally important to help students move beyond their limited approaches and limiting tendency to settle for whatever rolls out on paper the first time around. The novice view of a first draft as written-in-stone (or fast-drying cement) can preclude engaging more fully with the ideas being expressed. On the other hand, we have to acknowledge that there are advantages in being able, where it is appropriate, to master the art of one-draft writing. When students write essay exams or placement essays and when they go on to on-the-job writing where time doesn't permit multiple drafts, they need to produce first drafts which are also coherent,

Many current books by and for people in our business encourage the use of peer response groups as a means of enhancing learning. Almost none, however, translates this potentially powerful idea into workable strategies and techniques. Few comment usefully on the difficulties involved in the response group process, or on reasonable goals and outcomes, or even on the activity's deeper intellectual and behavioral implications. Sharing Writing is for teachers who are serious about helping students learn to work in response groups. In addressing both theoretical and practical concerns, Spear provides answers to two essential questions: What can writing teachers do to help students become good peer readers? How do peer response groups contribute to student growth as writers?

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Word processors, as teaching machines, are currently caught in something of a backlash. Just a few years ago, we heard they possessed almost magical powers for student writing and writing instruction. Now, before some of us have even had a chance to try them for ourselves, researchers have begun to tell us that computers do not really help student writers much after all. On the contrary, they warn, when students' performances with text editors are judged against their performances with pen and paper, inexperienced writers, those whose typical revising behaviors are actually editing behaviors, continue to edit exclusively and with increased frequency on the word pro-

An argument is presented for distinguishing between fluency and automaticity of procedures in writing. Writers must develop a certain level of fluency in some of their writing subskills, but skilled writing necessitates that automaticity not be absolute, not be “modular” to use Fodor's (1983) terminology. Various empirical results are presented suggesting that a prominent difference between skilled and less skilled writing is the extent of metacognitive control over writing subprocesses. It is this metacognitive control, not increasing encapsulated automaticity, that enables the processes that characterize skilled writing, such as directed search, critical examination, and revision. Educational implications of this premise are explored.

This article argues that the Given-New research done by linguists on texts can be used effectively in process approaches to teaching composition. Current theories define coherence as an integrative meaning formed cognitively by writers and readers. Cohesion refers to the means of combining surface text elements for retention in the reader's short-term memory. In this study, college students were taught Given-New cohesive principles as guides for invention, arrangement, and revision, and as cues to aid the reader's coherent processing of their intended meaning.

The development of technical manuals requires coordination of the expertise in the subject area and in writing and design skills as well as detailed knowledge of the audience and job context. In this research we examined the production process of five publication houses in an attempt to determine how or if these requirements for expertise are being met. A further goal was to determine what strategies in the production process may facilitate or detract from the production of effective documentation. Writers, managers, and illustrators were interviewed at each site. The work flow in developing a manual is described. Data on the use of specifications and guidelines, the revision process including quality control, validation and verification, are presented. The skills and duties of writers, illustrators, and government representatives are presented. Finally, the production process for technical manuals is interpreted in terms of a process model of writing and strategies for improving the quality of documentation is discussed.

Why is it that students seem to improve their texts so often, and desire to improve them more, when they're given nondirective feedback? Why do teacherless writing groups (where the writer gets conflicting responses from readers instead of teacherly direction) lead to more writing? How can Donald Murray (Writer 173) claim to get effective revision from writers in conferences lasting only five minutes? Stereotype of a Donald Murray conference:

This study examined three recent language arts textbook programs to determine the frequency of writing activities, the nature of writing tasks, and the frequency of process-approach activities such as selecting topics, prewriting, sharing, revising, and publishing. Results indicate that elementary school students receive in the central part of the lessons in their language arts textbooks opportunities to write an averange of approximately one piece of extended writing per week. Typically, the topic of the piece is selected by the text rather than the student; there is no prewriting activity; the piece is not shared with a teacher or peers; revision, which is seldom suggested, focuses on editing surface features, not content; and students' products are not published. Recommendations for improvements in writing activities are considered.

The author discusses that writing, when taken seriously, can interact with and stimulate the writer's thought process. Tools such as the microcomputer are shown to help through reducing the tedious jobs, especially by allowing easier access to and revision of work. Writing by increments is also facilitated. An example of the interaction between writing and creative processes is given.

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Writing is written within and for discourse communities, whose values, traditions, and beliefs condition the writer s own values and influence both the process of composition and the products issuing from that process.To understand how writers compose and revise within the business and industry community Broadhead and Freed examine the revision practices of proposal writers in a management-consulting firm. They describe the writers motives and intentions in changing a text. This study provides a firmly based theory of composing and revising that will enable business writers to achieve a balanced perspective by focusing on the ends as well as the means of composingthat is, by focusing on the interplay of product and process.

The authors describe two of the organizations involved in standards development in the US: the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and the National Information Standards Organization (NISO). They discuss the mechanism for standards development, the life cycle of a standard, and the revision of American National Standard Z39.18-1974, Guidelines for Format and Production of Scientific and Technical Reports.

Complicated documents often affect readers the way computer programs affect computers; technical writers are prone to many of the same serious errors that plague programmers. Among the many principles that writers can learn from programming are: 1) Models save money: it is far more economical to develop detailed outlines and mockups than to improvise from a vague outline. 2) Quality demands maintainability: every complicated document will need frequent revision, and only documents designed for ease of change will be kept current. 3) The trouble is in the interfaces: the procedures and tasks in a manual are not as error-prone as the rules for moving from part to part of the book itself. 4) Readers are subject to the laws of physics: many publication economies produce documents that defy the physical powers of the reader. 5) Communication is control: readers must be prevented from getting lost.

The computer's ability to store and process large volumes of material can be very helpful in writing criticism and evaluation. By using this technological capability, evaluative decisions made by an instructor can be processed quickly and transformed into typewritten commentary. This article describes a method for storing anticipated instructional comments in computer memory and retrieving those comments for the purpose of providing both evaluative and reinforcing feedback to students. In this manner, the computer aids the instructor by improving the speed of encoding those comments into written form.

The demand for quality technical manuals has increased. A survey of industry reveals that organizations are developing new techniques of management and are shifting old priorities in order to integrate production, technical writing, and marketing in an effort to produce better manuals. Companies are seeking to specify as much as possible the exact audiences for their manuals, and are writing and testing with users in mind. To facilitate revision and to cut costs, they are automating the production process.

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James L. Kinneavy, William McCleary, and Neil Nakadate. Writing in the Liberal Arts Tradition: A Rhetoric with Readings. Harper & Row, 1985. Pp. xvii + 395. Cloth. Instructor's manual. Marian M. Mohr, Revision: The Rhythm of Meaning. Boynton/Cook, 1984. 248 pages. Lynn Z. Bloom, Fact and Artifact: Writing Nonfiction. Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1985. 337 pages. Research in Composition and Rhetoric: A Bibliographic Sourcebook. Ed. Michael G. Moran and Ronald F. Lunsford. Greenwood Press, 1984. 506 pages.

Teaching students writing, reading, and thinking across the curriculum requires the acceptance of a premise, relatively simple on its face, but imbued with substantial promise for reinventing the formidable tradition of making writing the central cog of the intellectual machinery that facilitates learning. The premise is that all teachers in all disciplines should be actively involved in students' writing, reading, and thinking and should not function as mere judges and graders of purportedly finished writings. I expect to be encouraged by the administration of my college to require more writing, revision, and rewriting in courses that I teach in the future, and to expand the audiences for written work to include the class, the writing laboratory, professors in collaborative teaching arrangements, and others. The college will be participating in one of the national writing programs, and we must also assist our students in completing the writing requirements of the testing program that is mandated for all institutions in the state system of higher education. Recognizing that writing is a process and a mode for also helps students to read with more understanding of the structure of language. Writing and reading are connected, interactive processes requiring students to cooperate in the act of learning. Our students need instruction and practice for reading in their subjects. Reading assignments need to go beyond the text to include materials that offer balance, put the subject into perspective, and place it in the context of real-world points of reference for our students. Discipline-based reading helps students to acquire the learning and expected characteristic of the field. Reading also adds to the value of the writing within the subject or discipline by defining and illuminating basic practices, procedures, and values of the field. Reading and related writing in chemistry and other scientific areas are also forms of social behavior that we must teach if students are to be successful thinkers and scholars in the discipline. That is not revolutionary, it is merely practical. I invite my colleagues in the hard sciences to join the enterprise and re-

Readers and evaluators of children's writing still fall back on deficit explanations; papers are read for signs of what they lack rather than signs of growth. Presented here is a model that predicts how such growth may occur as a logical outcome of language acquisition. Drawing on research done in the past, the article provides a list of the kinds of language learning underway in the elementary school years and suggests that teachers may use this list to anticipate where and how such learning will influence the writing processes of children. Included in the list are sentence syntax, spelling conventions, and discourse grammars, all of which seem to be learned by “creative construction” (hypothesis building and refinement) and, to some extent, memorization. The article argues that children's writing performance is likely to suffer on one or more writing dimensions as the writer selectively attends to other dimensions of the task. For evaluators and teachers there are implications for feedback, for individual agendas, for revision, and for the kinds of conclusions one may draw from the examination of written products.

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The case study approach was used to describe the revision strategies used by eight twelfth grade writers as they wrote compositions for two audiences: their teachers and their peers. The sample consisted of four writers who had previously been classified as basic and four who had been classified as competent according to scores that they achieved on holistically scored pieces of writing for a teacher audience. The data included responses gathered during interviews with the subjects and with their previous teachers of English, multiple drafts of compositions produced by each writer for each audience, and audio tapes of the subjects' verbal protocols as they composed aloud. The findings indicated that (a) the basic writers made more revisions for the teacher audience, while the competent writers made more revisions for the peer audience; (b) the competent writers made a wider range of revisions according to the points, levels, types and purposes of revision that were established prior to the collection of the data; and (c) the competent writers were able to revise in extended episodes in which one revision was cued by, and related to, an earlier revision, while the basic writers made isolated revisions. Although there were differences in the revision patterns of the different groups of writers, the basic writers demonstrated that they possessed the same revision strategies as the competent writers, though they used those strategies in different ways. The verbal protocols of the basic writers suggested that their limited use of some of the revision strategies that they possessed resulted from the constraints under which they were operating. The most significant of those constraints seemed to be the difficulties that the basic writers had with the actual production of text and the basic writers' view of composing as a two-draft procedure with revision taking place only during the second draft. It was suggested by the investigator that students need opportunities to write for a variety of audiences other than their teachers and that teachers can facilitate successful revision in students' writing by providing students with information about the revision strategies that they possess but use too infrequently.

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Ann E. Berthoff, Response to Richard Gebhardt, "Writing Processes, Revision, and Rhetorical Problems: A Note on Three Recent Articles", College Composition and Communication, Vol. 35, No. 1 (Feb., 1984), p. 95

When teach modern literature courses, tell students literature evolves through a process of growth through innovation. That is, innovators like Kafka or Woolf or Joyce probed boldly beyond the current state of literary art, extending frontiers and opening territory for writers who later worked their ways toward the new borders. Much this same process, think, is at the heart of the composition teaching enterprise. Researchers and theorists push beyond the state of the art as it is practiced in composition courses, allowing textbook authors, curriculum developers, and classroom teachers slowly to work their ways into new territory. Slowly is a key word in sentence. For as you know, a wide gap separates state-of-the-art theory and state-of-the-art practice in composition. Maxine Hairston illustrates this point/ in The Winds of Change (CCC, 33 [Feb. 1982]), when she gives an answer to people in our profession who say that the admonition to 'teach process, not product' is now conventional wisdom for which further argument is unnecessary. I disagree, Hairston writes:

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As those of us who are over twenty-five and teach writing know, revision pedagogy has changed since the days when we were in school. Thanks to the research of Donald Murray, Nancy Sommers, Lester Faigley and Stephen Witte, to name just a few, teachers no longer present revision simply as the mop-up operation that students must endure for not getting it right the first time. It is now rather conceived as a complex creative act that everyone must master, if, like the professionals, one wants to write really well. Yet in our newly-found enthusiasm for revision, we must deal with a few anomalies. First, although research shows that most good writers revise more extensively than poor writers, some revise little and still produce fine texts. Journalists, for example, frequently produce lucid first-draft articles, and even novelists occasionally write whole books with only minor revision. James Dickey may assume that the first fifty ways I try it are going to be wrong, but Zora Neale Hurston says she wrote Their Eyes Were Watching God, a 286-page novel, in seven weeks with few changes.' Second, there are no uniform patterns that constitute expert revision. As Faigley and Witte pointed out in their recent study (Analyzing Revision), professional writers, dealing with the same topic under similar conditions, all revised in their own way:

It is unfortunate that so many college teachers of writing and composition textbooks describe revision as the process by which a writer merely cleans up the mechanical and stylistic infelicities of an otherwise completed text. This simplistic view presupposes something akin to the three-stage linear model of composing set forth by Rohman and Wlecke in the 1960's.2 Research during the past decade, particularly that of Emig and Sommers, challenges the assumption underlying such a view of revision by demonstrating that revision is not the end of a linear process, but is rather itself a recursive process,3 one which can occur at any point during composing. Recent research also shows that different groups of writers revise in different ways, a finding reflected in, for example, the work of Beach, Bridwell,5 Faigley and Witte,6 Flower,7 and Murray,8 as well as Sommers. Finally, recent research has developed classification systems to explain those revisions. Such efforts appear, for example, in the work of Sommers,9 Bridwell,'o and Faigley and Witte. However much this body of research helps us to understand the results or effects of revision, it does considerably less to help us understand what causes writers to revise. The most promising research on the causes of revision, of course, is that of Flower and Hayes. Reporting on their use of composing-aloud protocols in a case study format,'2 they conclude that when expert writers redefine or clarify the audience and the goals of their texts, they frequently revise.13 This research offers the best hypotheses about the situational or contextual causes of revision. But while Flower and Hayes suggest that the produced so far becomes part of the situational context, they do not adequately explore specific textual cues that may prompt revisions. Indeed, apart from what little can be gleaned from studies which look to errors14 in the text for causes of revision, we know very little about

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Making sense is the hallmark of purposeful writing, yet too few people take the time necessary to revise what they have written. No one should be satisfied with a first draft. Writing is a process and, as such, requires taking whatever time is necessary to produce worthwhile writing. Included are seven tips to consider in the revision process: (1) keep subjects, verbs, objects, and complements close together; (2) maintain an average sentence length of less than 20 words; (3) prefer the active voice; (4) eliminate the indefinite “this” (5) simplify verb tenses; (6) ensure that all paragraphs have clear topic sentences; and (7) avoid “this is” and “there are” constructions.