This is an experimental study to find out what kinds of revisions are made by students at three grade levels and to test a major tenet of the textbook lore about revision: that students should allow time to elapse between their drafting and revising. Randomly assigned groups of 8th, 10th, and 12th graders (178 subjects) wrote a first draft in response to an essay topic and, then, after varying periods of elapsed time--one day, three days, and a week--wrote a final version. All writing sessions were 50-minute class periods. Draft-to-draft revisions were coded; first drafts and final versions were holistically scored. A chi-square distribution-free test was run to determine main effects of and interactions between grade level and elapsed time. / The 8th graders made significantly more total revisions and significantly more surface-level (mechanics, usage, etc.) and low-level (word and phrase) revisions. Subjects who rewrote a week later made significantly more low-level revisions. Less than a third of all revisions for all groups were surface-level revisions. There were more substitutions than any other nonsurface revision; over half of the substitutions were clause and multiclause revisions. Text-level revisions (radically altered final versions) accounted for 16.3% of the sample. Of all final versions, 58.9% received a higher score than that awarded the first draft. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 43-12, Section: A, page: 3830. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1983.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_74997 |
| Contributors | ASH, BARBARA HOETKER., Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text |
| Format | 194 p. |
| Rights | On campus use only. |
| Relation | Dissertation Abstracts International |
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