Re-Visioning the Whole
Author(s): Joseph I. Tsujimoto
Source: The English Journal, Vol. 73, No. 5 (Sep., 1984), pp. 52-55
Published by: National Council of Teachers of English
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/816972
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A New Contributor
the
Whole
Re-Visioning
Joseph I. Tsujimoto
The difficulty of teaching writing has always been
the difficulty of teaching revision. That is, if we
try to teach revision at all. For the teacher, revision remains a complex idea, partaking of innumerable rules, perceptions, and operations. For
the student, it means everything and anything that
can be done to a work, from correcting the
spelling to recasting the whole.
In teaching writing through the writing process, we teach revision. Revision means re-seeing,
re-visioning, hence, re-thinking one's thoughts,
over and again, to discover and clarify final
meaning: the What-to-write and the How-towrite-it. It repeatedly demands solutions to these
two problems throughout five phases-from prewriting, writing, conforming, and copyediting, to
postwriting, underscoring its recursive nature.
Prewriting focuses on the generation or invention of first thoughts while writing focuses on
their modification and expansion. The reason that
the first phase is not called invention and the
second phase revision is that invention and revision are, in reality, synchronous: that much
revision occurs while inventing and that much
revision occurs while revising. Not only do we
move consciously and unconsciously back and
forth between the two to meet immediate needs,
we do both nearly simultaneously. Upon closer
scrutiny, the two are indistinguishable, as is the
artificial dichotomy of content and form. As with
content and form, there are practical applications
for making distinctions. But the distinction between invention and revision is not helpful in the
identification of phases, for by definition (and, as
we shall see later) the purpose of revision is
invention.
52
English Journal
Such prewriting strategies as multiple lead
writing, Rico's clustering (or mindmapping),
Burke's pentad, Berkenkotter's attribute listing,
Pike and Becker's tagmemics, and other heuristics
emphasizing rethinking dramatize the formal use
of revision for inventive purposes.
With the discovery of a tentative thesis or
"working idea"-the objective of prewriting-the
student enters the writing phase, where the idea is
drafted, where its meaning is defined or changed.
Sudol notes, "the first draft will tyrannize the
second draft unless revising becomes creative
learning." 1 The teacher must show the student the
workable options-the various revisionary operations-that allow for genuine re-seeing, so that
alternative meanings can be grasped, judged, and
finally selected.
Partner Revision
For nearly every paper, I have students exchange
their drafts with a partner. I tell them to revise
their partner's paper as if it were their own. At
first, students doubt my instructions. However,
after they do the work and get back their original
paper and the revision, students will often say that
Partner Revision was valuable, not only for what
their partner's revision shows them but also for
what they learn while they revise their partner's
draft. New ideas, new vocabulary, new strategies
of organization and style, and new and bold attitudes in tone and voice are the rewards students
will emphasize most often. Sometimes I assign
Partner Revision in combination with Revising
by Varying the Audience, Speaker, or the Form of
Discourse (see exercises below). Elbow, from
whom I learned this device, says that revision is
easiest learned by working on someone else's
writing.2 Too few have taken his advice.
and development, not to mention writers' growing
intimacy with their own work.
Memory Revision
At the 1981 Conference on College Composition
and Communication, the following was reported:
Revising by Varying the Audience
Have students write to a twelve-year-old, to a truck
driver, to the commoners or the king in the period
under study, to the editor of Mademoiselle, to
Hamlet, to Shakespeare himself, to Grandma, to
God, to a Martian, a calendar, a bedroom, even
one's progeny in the year 3000. Recognition of
whom one writes for (beyond the teacher) is a
crucial revising force, determining both substance
and tone. It forces students to consider the work
from their audience's perspective, training them
to judge what the audience needs to know. The
problem of writing to the universe is the difficulty
of seeing from the universe's point of view.
Aftera large numberof studentssubmittedessayson
an assigned topic, they were asked to do the same
assignmentagain. One group had accessto their first
versions; the other had not. As might be expected
[my emphasis], those in the second group altered the
context of their work considerably and wrote better
papers, while those who had access to their earlier
drafts seemed, in general, to limit themselves to
copyediting.3
Many of my students substantiate the accuracy of
these findings, writing papers of greater conciseness and precision, centering their discussions on
the more important points-which, consistently,
are those that they remember.
Revising by Group Feedback
First, I have students revise according to feedback
given orally and then in writing by each group
member upon the writer's completion of two
readings.4 Listeners respond to four questions:
What seems to you to be the writer's central idea?
What do you think the title should be? What
words and phrases stuck in your mind? How
would you revise the work if it were yours? Since
the responses are not threatening, emphasizing
their subjectivity and demanding no esoteric
knowledge of criticism, both writer and listeners
are disarmed by their positive nature. Thanks,
again, to Elbow.
Later, I introduce criteria for feedback and have
individual students direct the groups. Before they
read, I ask them to focus the listeners' attention
on two or three questions that they want answered.
Over and over, students remind me how group
work has been helpful to them. Contrary to
popular belief, they work better without the
teacher's presence. I do not enter a group unless I
am invited. Nor do I feel offended that I have yet
to be asked.
Revising by Varying the Point of View
This is especially good for descriptive and narrative work. Not only do writers write from the first
person, they work also from the first-person witness and from the third person. Such changes of
perspective naturally result in general overhaul
Revising by Varying the Speaker
Have students write as any of the above to any of
the others above, or have them speak as Pythagoras, Hemingway, or a Neanderthal Man; or
as a blood (or sperm) cell on its journey, or as one
of Macbeth's witches reincarnated in another
work; or as a graph or map of a beleaguered
country. Roleplaying helps free students from the
psychological ghosts that scare them away from
the business at hand. The challenge and fun in
this exercise helps students worry much less about
their inadequacies and the impressions they will
make on their audience.
Revising by Varying the Purpose
Have students move from one purpose to another-from explaining to protesting, from requesting to defining, from demonstrating to
recommending, from soliciting to directing, from
contrasting to predicting, from challenging to
rejecting, from prohibiting to judging. Here,
purpose is defined as the writers' intentions in
communicating their ideas. Ideas are always put
forth to do something, to affect someone to some
end.
Revising by Varying the Form of Discourse
Have students move among Kinneavy's four basic
forms,5 beginning with the expressive.
Under expressive writing (where the emphasis
is on the writer) are diary, prayer, apology,
journal, testimony, confession, personal experience, last wills and testaments, etc.
September 1984
53
Under transactive writing (where the emphasis
is on the subject) are argumentation, diagnosis,
legal briefs, news writing, summary, and factual
writings of various sorts.
Under persuasive writing (where the emphasis
is on the audience) are advertising, editorials,
political speeches, sermons, press releases, legal
oratory, petition, and so forth.
Under poetic writing (where the emphasis is
on language and structure) are the novel, short
story, poetry, drama, song, film, essay, etc.
According to Martin et al.,
Expressivewriting... is the seed bed from which
more specializedand differentiatedkinds of writing
can grow. . . . Mucheffectivewriting seemsto be on
a continuum somewherebetweenthe expressiveand
the poetic.'
Revising by Assuming the Opposite Stance
This is powerful in anticipating the opposition's
counter argument. It may lead writers to modify
their stance, strengthen it, take up a medial stance,
or even adopt the opposition's. Or, prior to having students take a stance, have them work up an
explanation paper, discussing arguments on both
sides.
Revising through Moffett's Four Levels
of Abstraction7
The first level is what is happening now, where
data are determined by one's perceptual apparatus, where the form of writing might appear as
stream of consciousness.
The second level is what happened, where the
data are determined by one's memory; and though
primarily ordered in time, as with the first level,
the mind exercises greater self-consciousness.
The third level is what happens, where the
single event is treated as something that recurs,
becoming an example among many in search of
generalization. To present it as what happens,
students must rename it (classify it) and compare
it with other similar experiences. Students, here,
move from time order to an order of ideas.
The fourth level is what will, may, or could
happen (or be), where the generalization is presumed true and i used as a promise to a larger
generalization or claim.
I had tried a varianr •f the above in both a
achers and in my
workshop for high scho,
eleventh grade writing class. ,_ u. th instances, the
revisions provided both groups , strong founda54
English Journal
tion for their ultimate thoughts, providing data
that they could use for their ends.
Revising by Choosing Secondary Points
Have the students write successive drafts on
narrower and narrower issues that appear as supportive points in previous drafts. Then have them
choose the draft they wish to pursue at length,
having touched upon the general scope of issues
wherein their selection lies. To some degree, they
will be aware of the ramifications and implications contiguous to their issue.
In a sense, with such variety, revising is like
operating a kaleidoscope. With each turn the
elements are rearranged into new forms, suggesting new meanings.
As in art, the work is revised over and over
again through trial and error. According to
Getzels and Csikszentmihalyi, "one would expect
that a discovered problem [meaning] does not
become clearly formulated until several attempts
are carried out."8 In their ten-year study of art
students, they found that there is a direct correlation between students' discovery-oriented behavior
and the quality of their final products and that
(according to Einstein and Wertheimer) the formulation of the problem is often more important
than its solution.9 Applied to the teaching of
writing, such insights lead to the understanding
that the writing phase not only precedes the conforming and copyediting phases but also takes
precedence over them--persuading teachers to
reconsider the hierarchy of their pedagogical concerns. They would, ideally, like both quality
(originality) and perfection of form, but they must
accept that the latter will be hollow without some
significant measure of the former.
Revision in the conforming phase focuses on
molding the body of the work to its final meaning. Apart from superficiality, the problem of
most student writing is the problem of insufficient
information and illustration. The most effective
tool, my students tell me, is Andrasick's Five W's,
H, and the Question Mark.1o In this exercise,
students exchange papers throughout the class
period, responding to each work with Who, What,
When, Where, Why, and How in the margin,
wherever the work begs answers to these questions. The question mark is set against anything
not absolutely clear or which begs elaboration.
Revision in the copyediting phase focuses on
grammatical and conventional correction. Such
work is also best accomplished with others.
The final phrase of the process is postwriting,
which asks students to respond to questions eliciting their opinions of their efforts, and the virtues
and shortcomings of their final products. I ask the
following questions after each final draft:
1. How original or new are these ideas?
2. How unique are the feelings? How strongly are
they expressed?
3. How original are the words,phrases,sentences?
4. How rich are the specific,concretedetails?
5. What part would you spend more time on? Why?
6. How would you rate your commitment to excellence in the workdone for this paper?
7. What final comment and grade would you give
yourself?
Such self-evaluation is revisionary. Students continually refine their sense of good writing in the
light of what they have and have not accomplished, adjusting their sights, each time, for what
they must do in the future.
In the end, because of what they have done to
their work at separate times, students understand
that writing is a process of revision. They know
they must cultivate the capacity to suspend closure
on a problem if they are to discover something
worth saying. They know that the various options
and permutations available to the teacher are
available to them. They understand that "perfection" is an illusory idea. They understand not
only that any work can be further improved, but
also, and perhaps more significantly, that the
work can undergo infinite transformation.
Notes
1. Ronald A. Sudol, ed., Revision: New Essays for
the Teacher of Writing (Urbana: ERIC and NCTE,
1982),p. xi.
2. Peter Elbow, Writing with Power (New York:
OxfordUniversityPress, 1981),p. 123.
3. Sudol, p. xi.
4. Peter Elbow, Writing Without Teachers (New
York:OxfordUniversityPress, 1973),pp. 84-116.
5. James L. Kinneavy, "The Basic Aims of Discourse." College Composition and Communication 20
(December1969):297-304.
6. Nancy Martin, et al., Writing and Learning
Across the Curriculum: 11-16 (London: Ward Lock
Educational,1976),p. 26.
7. James Moffett, "I, You, and It." College Com-
position
and Communication
16 (December 1965):
243-248.
8. Jacob W. Getzels and Mihaly Csikzsentmihalyi,
A Creative Vision: A Longitudinal Study of Problem
Finding in Art (New York: John Wiley and Sons,
1976),p. 4.
9. Getzels,p. 4.
10. Kathy Andrasick, Assistant Director of the
Hawaii Writing Project and a colleague of mine at
Iolani School, introducedthe method to me.
Joseph I. Tsujimoto teaches at
Iolani School in Honolulu.
Call for Potential Members-Committee on English in
Community-Based Learning Programs
The Committee on English in Community-Based Learning Programs is seeking teachers, administrators, and supervisors interested in joining the committee, which will begin its work this year at the
Detroit Convention. The charge of this committee is to develop guidelines for high school credit in
English as a result of work experiences in "external" learning programs; to recommend appropriate
methods of monitoring the experiences of students in such programs and evaluating student achievement in English; and to foster exchange of information about such programs among urban teachers
and others.
If you are interested, submit a brief letter describing your background in community-based or
external learning programs to Frederick J. Koury, City-as-School, 16 Clarkson Street, New York,
NY 10014.
September 1984
55