"The Will to Revise: Commenting, Revision, and Motivation in College Students"

About the Author

Elizabeth Bracey is a second-year graduate student in the English program at Seton Hall University in South Orange, New Jersey. She earned her BA in forensic psychology from John Jay College of Criminal Justice where she began working as a tutor at the college’s writing center. She continues to work with John Jay College students to improve their writing and their approaches to revision.

Contents

Introduction

Literature Review

Methodology

Results

Discussion

Works Cited 

Discussion

It is first compelling to examine these results as further support for Nancy Sommers’s claims about authority and students’ reluctance to deviate from what they understand to be acceptable. According to Sommers, students may often disregard their own concerns and “follow every comment [the instructor has given] and fix the text appropriately as suggested [by the instructor]” (“Responding to Student Writing” 125). Students perceive instructor comments as “commands” and, therefore, perceive that their problems lie in failing to address the directives of the instructor (125). However, student writing that accounts only for professor’s comments “fail[s] to improve substantially” because students disregard other concerns about their writing they may have had prior to consideration of the instructor’s comments (125).  Students in this study exhibited the same concerns and behaviors as Sommers’s students. All of the students surveyed explained that their professor’s comments were the most important guiding factors for their revisions, which suggests that the students were unable to discern what relevant revisions they could make to their writing without the guidance of the professor. Because students relied primarily on the comments of professors to guide their revisions and on the tutor’s assessment of whether or not they were addressing the professors’ comments, students may not have been confident enough in their abilities to revise on their own. Thus, the prevalence of students’ concern for professor’s comments is a possible indication of students’ pervasive feelings that they lack authority and that they will be successful only if they follow the “commands” of the professor.  This result adds to the body of research supporting the contention that modifications must be made in response to student writing that will help students find a sense of academic authority.

However, it is possible that the students may have been motivated to falsely report their concerns because of their relationship with the tutor and the writing center.  Because students had previously met and worked with the tutor and understood the writing center’s function as a tutoring service and not as an editing or proofreading service, it is possible that students tailored their reported concerns to fit what they thought the tutor would find acceptable. Therefore, it is possible that students’ initial reports of their concerns were influenced by their consideration of writing center protocol and by consideration for the work they had previously done with the tutor. Thus, the relationship with the tutor combined with the students’ understanding of writing center standards may have influenced them to report concerns that were not entirely truthful.  To account for this, future research should consider using a random sample of students who have not been acquainted with a tutor previously and who are attending the writing center for the first time.

Interestingly, the hypothesis that students would be more motivated to put effort into assignments that focused on subject matter that was relevant to their careers was called into question by these results.  Particularly, this question was raised by interviews with students who reported that they were pursuing master’s degrees in public administration (PAD). While the assignments associated with PAD courses, which included memo and policy writing exercises and capstone courses in policy memoranda, were specifically tailored to developing students’ skill sets in a particular field, these students clearly expressed that they were interested in fulfilling the desires that were pointed out by the professor because they wanted their final projects to “be approved the first time around” or because they “wanted to get at least a ‘B +’ in the class.” Because students focused primarily on addressing the explicit concerns of their professor, it can be concluded that the relevance of the topic to the student’s career was not a primary motivator for revision. However, it is still possible to explain the students’ preoccupation with grades in terms of their motivation within their careers. When students were asked why their grades were such a primary concern, they reported that they understood that high grades would result in their graduation as well as relevant material that they could add to a curriculum vita when they applied for jobs. Brenton Faber and Johndan Johnson-Eilola’s explanation that universities prepare students to be part of a “new social order” in addition to providing them with specialized knowledge may explain the perceived importance of grades over content (1061). Faber and Johnson-Eilola explain that students at universities are indeed provided with a particular knowledge set that, theoretically, should help them advance in a particular career field. However, the writers also posit that this instills the ideals of a particular profession insofar as universities give students “social and cultural lessons in how to function as members of a new emergent and socially and politically important professional class” (1061). If universities encourage not only specialized knowledge but also ideas about professional culture, it is possible that the achievement of high grades and its connection to success and social class makes grades a more important motivator than interest.  In light of this, it is possible that students make a connection between grades and the ability to enter into a career field rather than skill set and entrance into a career. Further research may consider including sociocultural factors in its variables in order to more thoroughly examine this finding.

Although these results are at first disheartening, it is clear that the goals of college students have some influence over their work ethic. Continuing research to determine what interventions might encourage college students not only to become stronger writers within their fields but also what interventions might encourage them to revise their work as part of a learning experience rather than an exercise in satisfying the professor will be crucial in developing stronger, more conscientious writers.