As Curzan and Damour assert, "Students can learn a great deal from revising their papers, and it can provide your comments on a paper with a direct and immediate purpose" (154). From my own experience as a student, I know this to be true. By responding to comments and questions posed by a teacher, students are forced to respond to a critical voice that is not their own. In the process, arguments become more self-conscious and directed. An essay that had initially been a monologue becomes a kind of invisible dialogue. If the student is forced to respond to a particular, clear challenge, the paper can only become stronger.
I plan (at this point) to assign 2 mandatory revisions during the course of the semester. However, I wonder what the most effective method of assigning revisions looks like? I feel that I need to come up with a list of revision criteria so that my expectations are clear. I suppose one of the crucial criteria will be that the revision must engage with the comments that I have made on the first draft of the essay. This would guarantee that the student was moving back and forth between the external, critical voice and his or her own reasoning process. This seems like it could be quite fruitful. I will continue to consider what my revision criteria will look like. I'm open to suggestions.
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Tim,
I also got the impression of revisions as "dialogue" with the instructor's comments. It seems to me that if a student gets defensive about some of the comments, that can perhaps be a good thing. That is, the student knows what s/he meant, so s/he will respond to written comments with more fervent support of his/her argument.
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