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Revision and Process: “Round Robin” Group Writing Because revision can be baffling to students, I devised the following exercise to help them revise in a nonthreatening environment. The exercise calls for one written paragraph in basic writing courses and three paragraphs in college composition. Otherwise, the exercise remains identical. In an early class meeting, I place students into groups of four and hand out the written directions below. I explain that the students will write three paragraphs with each person in the group taking a turn. When finished, they must designate one person from the group to read the completed writing aloud to the class. Directions: 1. Using one idea found anywhere in the first three assigned essay readings, decide within the group which one idea to develop into a writing of at least three paragraphs. 2. Next, begin with one piece of paper and decide which student will write the first two sentences on the selected topic. Then in a “round robin” fashion, pass the paper and have each person write two additional sentences. This rotation should continue until the group has written three paragraphs. 3. Then the group should make the necessary decisions to move words or phrases, sentences, or paragraphs around until the writing is clear and cohesive. Work at this procedure until the writing achieves its purpose. 4. When the writing has evolved so that everyone in the group is comfortable with it, select the group member who will read aloud the writing to the class. This exercise teaches the thought-word connection, focused reflective thought, and logical sentence progression. Students must carefully examine organization, structure, and content to present a logical cohesive writing to the class. Judith Platz York County Technical College, Wells, Maine and Central Maine Technical College, Auburn, Maine

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Copyright © 2000 by the National Council of Teachers of English. All rights reserved.

“Righting” Student Passages To provide a manageable tool for addressing stylistic and grammatical issues, I have generated two pages of simplified rules and advice (one on style and one on punctuation) which I use in writing and literature courses. I recommend a time-consuming yet worthwhile tactic to encourage learners to internalize and practice the “suggestions” on those two pages. Using colored sheets simplifies directions: “Take out your blue sheets.” (Room for creativity here.) To get examples for students to use for practicing the rules and advice, I type passages from each piece of student writing submitted for the students to share. Everything is anonymous, of course, and the students discuss these excerpts in small-group settings after relevant minipresentations on my part. The benefits—for more than two decades now—seem worth the extra time I spend typing. Using these handouts, students examine structures out of context, encouraging a focus on writing skills, not content. And they are often openly embarrassed or proud (I always include exemplary passages), expanding their awareness of readers who are not me. We also deal with complete student essays, of course, but 10-15% of class time is devoted to this activity. Mary Lazar Kent State University Tuscarawas Campus New Philadelphia, Ohio Showing Words versus Telling Words To help students understand the difference between descriptive language (showing) and narrative language (telling), I do an activity with a magazine cover of a celebrity. It helps if the celebrity evokes positive and negative responses from students, someone such as Madonna or the President. Pictures of female bodybuilders also generate strong opposite reactions. I tell students we are going to brainstorm a list of words and phrases to describe the magazine cover face, and the words, which I write in the middle of the chalk board, must be concrete, visual, and appeal to the senses. We discuss what these terms mean, but once the listing begins, students call out words such as “awesome,” “criminal,” “disgusting”—narrative or telling details—which I list on one side of the board. Items like “tanned, wrinkled face,” “shoulder-length, blonde hair” are listed on the other side of the board. Once we have a dozen or so words and phrases in each list, I ask the students to analyze each list to discover the organizing criteria. Why did I put certain items in certain lists? Students usually come to see that the descriptive details are indeed visual, but the narrative details describe the writer’s feelings rather than the picture’s characteristics. We can then proceed to a discussion of how concrete language can also carry feelings. “Greasy, limp, brown hair” and “glossy, straight, brown hair” may both be concrete, but students can begin to see there are multiple ways to describe the

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same feature depending on their intentions. They learn to take charge of the “reality” that comes across in their word choices. Jan Geyer Berkshire Community College Pittsfield, Massachusetts Using Film to Model “Larger Meaning” in Personal Narrative Whatever else anything is it ought to begin by being personal. —Meg Ryan (You’ve Got Mail) Students ought to have a variety of writing experiences in first-year composition. They should write papers in which they relate meaningful personal experiences. Indeed, it is when writing about salient memories that many students first “come to voice” as writers. It is more often than not in autobiographical writing that they discover the capacity to move and to teach and to say important things. I ask students to do more than merely recount an important memory. I ask them to reflect deeply on the experience and, as they craft and create their stories, try to discover a “larger meaning” to convey to readers. Most students in college comp these days have had a lot more experience watching movies than reading and writing. So I try to draw from that experience to help them appreciate the effectiveness of finding the significance in a personal narrative. Stand By Me is a film I cite as a model because most students have seen it. I begin by asking the class how Stand By Me ends. Most students don’t exactly recall, but, after some memory-stoking discussion, someone will usually remember. The conclusion finds Ben, the story’s protagonist portrayed in his adulthood by Richard Dreyfuss, staring into a word processor. What did Dreyfuss write, I ask the students, after reflecting so deeply on his narrative? Often students will come up with a pretty good paraphrase of the words Dreyfuss typed on the computer screen. I then show the final moments of Stand By Me, where Dreyfuss is seen writing: “I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve. Jesus, does anyone?” Though it is worthwhile to follow-up with discussions of the larger meanings found in assigned readings, I have discovered that students are particularly struck by the Stand By Me example and are moved to seek morals in their own important memories as they shape written accounts of them. Dave Waddell California State University, Chico Chico, California

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