Difficulties with improving student writing

E110 Goals and Purposes: Difficulties

My students believe they have “said it all” and have “no more to say” on their first drafts. Improving writing with peer feedback could reveal other students’ mental “caves” and, in so doing, help students see their own mental “caves.” Such peer editing reveals what has been assumed, overlooked, disconnected, and undefined. But peer editing is more than just “good job” or “nice idea.”

Students must learn to look beyond the conventions misused, the awkward syntax, the wrong word and see the argument or concept beneath the errors and missing evidence. Seeing writing as a process in motion, a creation that evolves again and again, helps students detach their egos from their multiple drafts to become a genuine audience offering genuine product feedback.

My students have difficulty developing thoughts and so do not see complex issues nor missing transitions. Asking good questions, thinking more deeply about subjects, yoking objects or ideas together in ways not done before better prepares students to critique similar and opposing ideas, evaluate evidence, perceive the rhetoric, and see missed possibilities. So peer editing textual creations as a conversation about the ideas presented will improve writing.

Improving critical thinking will improve research. Good writers dig for good information. Trusted to find and cite reputable sources for future research, our global world media requires us all to recognize good sources and question poorly developed information. Peer editing professional work will also sharpen critical presentation skills.

So well taught critical thinking and peer editing can lead to paradigm shifts in writing and thinking evolvement, but learning how to remove verbiage reveals how little they have said and how much they have learned to say. Good writing shines the golden light of good ideas through a well-cut diamond. Every student has diamonds waiting to be “shared” regardless of the media chosen. Self-reflection upon writing, willingness to listen to critiques, learning to remove verbiage, and evaluating textual efficacy will build the meta-cognitive skills needed to create great texts.

These editing skills I can teach. What difficulties I have is transferring such skills to digital medias. Forced to turn a paper into a poster for the 2007 NCTE convention, I struggled to find visual images to convey abstract literary ideas, and the challenge created two posters of which I am proud. Learning remediation will definitely be a peer group effort, both challenging and exciting, for me.