Difficulty Assignment #1

Nancy Sommers basically wrote an article that was comparing different styels of writing and revising. She compared the way that “student” writers do their writing/revising and how “experienced” writers go about it. She showed that the student writers tend to focus more on “fixing” what they thought was wrong. This was more often than not heavily grammar intensive. Whereas the experienced writers worried more about revising their thoughts and what exactly it is that they were trying to say.
I ran in to a few things while reading the article that particularly caught my attention. “Scratch out and do over again” and “reviewing” are words that some students used instead of “revise.” I thought that these made it sound like students just skim through their own work for the bland words only in order to replace them with “better” words from a thesaurus. Personally, I don’t really do this much and feel like it is definitely more of a generalization. Also, who exactly are these “student” writers? High school? Middle school? College?
Sommers also claims that students think their work is perfectly fine and completed, with regards to their ideas that they are trying to communicate, and the only thing that needs to be changed or revised is the actual words that are used. She claims that this is why students refer to thesauruses when they revise.
She says “if (students) feel they know what they want to say, then there is little reason for making revisions.” To me, it seems like this should be something that any writer, regardless of their experience, holds true. Although, I can see how a more “experienced” writer may go back and rework their ideas in order to express them from a different perspective.
I feel that student writers are doing most, if not all, of their writing as assignments. Speaking from a student writer perspective, and I know this is a little unfortunate, when I have a writing assignment, I tend to just crank out what needs to get done and not necessarily try to spend a whole lot of time doing revising. If I feel comfortable with what I have written, then I’ve noticed that the only revisions I do look for is grammatical stuff. I feel that I have always been taught to make sure my sentences are structured correctly rather than the ideas being emphasized. Perhaps teachers assume that if the writing is correct, then the ideas and thoughts will naturally be the best they can be.

Sommers quotes an experienced writer who talks about how they enjoy the idea of their writing never being “finished” but rather “abandoned.” I don’t agree with this idea entirely because of the fact that writing always feels like an assignment that I want to be done with. I suppose if it’s for a creative writing piece then I can see how it would be beneficial to see the piece as never completely finished though. But I have learned in my art classes that you sometimes have to come to a point where you just have to stop.
I also have to disagree with Sommers when she says that the experienced writer have “a concern for their readership.” I think that many student writers often think of who their audience is when taking in to account their own writing. In fact, since it seems that we student writers have been taught to pay attention to grammar so much by the teachers then one might say that the teachers are the sole audience, so that is the cause for such heavy grammar/word revision. However, weren’t these “experienced” writers at one time “student” writers as well? That would explain that if students, in fact, seem to worry about their grammar and word choice more than their thoughts, then with time, as they become “experienced” they will focus more on the ideas they are trying to convey within their writing.