R1 The Need for Ruminating

Anne Marie Eanes

R1 Rewriting

             What struck me initially as I read Rewriting was how vital each of the moves of coming to terms, forwarding, countering, and taking an approach would be to the development of confident and effective writers. I especially enjoyed the explanation of the importance of incorporating direct quotations in a way that will focus the attention on how the writer is utilizing an author’s work to express his or her own point. Too often students don’t fully understand that quotations can’t do the work for them in their essays. I try to stress with my students the importance of incorporating quotations to validate a point that they themselves have made about their topic and whenever possible to then take the comment made by that cited author one step further by expanding upon the author’s original observation.   To be honest I have never really thought about the efficacy of considering and asking the students to explain the basis of the author’s point of view as well as their own perspective.   I was also intrigued by the section on tracking revisions. I have often lamented that my students seem to be reluctant to substantially revise their writing. In fact, it sometimes seems as if they do not even devote sufficient time to proofreading what they have written to eliminate obvious grammatical and/or mechanical errors. Going through the process of visually tracking the revisions would be a wonderful way to empower the students to make significant revisions to their work. This would be especially effective when used in conjunction with peer conferences. Sometimes the students seem to need the additional impetus of peer feedback to realize that their writing needs expansion or clarification.

In regard to proposing an additional movement to the ones already delineated, I would suggest a preliminary move that must precede the stated ones. Perhaps there is an expectation at the collegiate level that students have already mastered my proposed move. However, in my experience with high school students, I have discovered that it cannot be assumed that they have honed this skill. The move I would like to suggest is ruminating. A student needs to fully experience and ponder the ideas within a text before he or she can truly formulate coherent and essential comments about it. Frequently students don’t even read a literary work or non-fiction prose selection completely before they try to write an analytical essay on the work. They resort to reading SparkNotes or other summaries of the text instead of immersing themselves in the experience of interacting with the entire piece. Because they have not solidified their own thoughts on the text, it makes the task of selecting appropriate sources to enhance their own ideas more difficult. The process of ruminating more deeply about the text will also give the students an opportunity to reflect on their own perspective as they approach the task. Understanding their own perspective may help them to seek out sources that will either have a similar perspective or will offer a totally different point of view. Adding this step at the beginning of the process will lay a stronger foundation for the remaining moves.