As I’ve mentioned earlier in this dissertation, I heavily stress revision as “re- seeing” because most students have learned to approach revision as an act of correction, a paradigm I’m convinced is partially responsible for student writing paralysis. Because of this, the revising process in my class takes many forms. However, this is where teachers who prefer the more traditional approaches to writing pedagogy (focusing on syntactic clarity, mechanical accuracy, etc.) can still benefit from the generative effects of the more manageable constraints, particularly those focusing on word choice, grammar, syntax, and mechanics.
That said, I think most writing teachers would agree that good grammar does not guarantee good writing. Other factors like having provocative ideas, using precise diction, paying attention to rhythm and organization, etc. all influence writing quality. In order to help students improve their attention to writing outside of the isolated event of the writing classroom, it’s important to get students to pay attention to these things, in general, not just in response to a specific assignment. In other words, practicing the type
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of thoughtful play constraints require exposes students to a different relationship with writing, in general, that I think transcends the classroom in a way that rote grammar exercises do not. Instead of training students to write “correctly,” I use constraints as a way to help students to see their writing differently, and a frequent by-product of this difference can often be a result that resembles accuracy.
For example, a student in an ENG 102 class had the following sentence in his paper: “My main argument for my essay, which is about the topic of video games and if they influence violence in children, my response to that is that they don't.” This is a standard example of “awkward writing.” A careful reading can glean the gist, but it’s unnecessarily wordy and unfocused. Instead of writing “awkward” next to the sentence, I gave him the following constraints: 1) write this 2 times without using any being verbs or pronouns and 2) write this two times using exactly 9 words in each sentence. He gave me the following sentences: 1a) Video games don’t influence violence in children. 1b) Video games don’t make children violent. 2a) I don’t think video games cause violence in children. 2b) Violent children are not created by watching video games. Though some might not deem these sentences ideal either, all four of them are a vast improvement on what he originally had for this rhetorical situation (i.e., a formal academic essay) because his idea was more clearly communicated. To him, the original sentence made sense, so he had to get outside of himself (i.e., be defamiliarized to the writing) in order to see the sentence differently, and the constraints let him do that. It’s also worth noting that the two constraints I gave him weren’t wholly arbitrary, but they certainly weren’t
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It’s also worth noting that those constraints I proposed were far from the only options. Any number of constraints could have yielded similar results. He had five prepositions in that sucker. I’m fairly certain that telling him, “You can only use one preposition” would have been just as effective, as would myriad other versions. Although, I had another student waiting to talk to me, and I wasn’t sure if I’d have to explain what a preposition was, so the two I chose to use were somewhat strategic. Additionally, because I often comment digitally, I have a short-cut comment bank that produces 10 different versions of these types of simple constraints. When I type “pre,” the phrase “You can only use one preposition” pops up and I move on. It switches the burden of revision from the teacher78 to the student. Also, because I often comment digitally, I have a record of my comments saved on Dropbox, so when I’m reading a final draft that still has noticeable clarity issues, I can open up my comments on the rough draft and can check to see if I’ve given a student a constraint that they hadn’t followed. I’ve found that follow-up can be a useful component of revision constraints, so, often, when I know that I might have a light class day, I’ll tell students to bring in sentences from their papers I’ve assigned constraints to in order to share with the class. I’ve also emailed students before, asking them “Did you do the constraints I gave you on page three?” I know that sounds like a ridiculous amount of work for a busy teacher, but it’s not at all time consuming if you keep a tally while you grade and email in small groups with a blind cc.79 Also, if you follow up once early in the semester, it creates a panoptic effect where the students do what you ask because they never know when you are going
78 I’ve seen teachers simply correct awkward sentences in student work because it’s often easier
than trying to explain what the problem is. How much a student learns from those types of ‘comments’ is questionable.
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to check back in. Finally, at the University of South Carolina we have one-on-one conferences with our students in 101 and 102 class, and if not instructed to prepare, students usually come to the meeting with nothing to discuss, so having a revision constraint to follow-up on can be a really productive use of that time.
These revision constraints also work well in peer review because students are often anxious about commenting on work because they don’t see themselves as writing “experts” and don’t feel qualified to respond to a peer’s work. Constraints take the burden of perceived expertise out of the equation and can empower students to trust their gut: if something is unnecessarily hard to read, point it out, and give the author a short constraint. At the very least they are pointing to a potential problem. It also gives students a concrete reason to revisit their own work because for so many of them, the goal isn’t to write well but to fill the paper and forget about it.
Many students are perfectly adept at putting their thoughts and experiences into words as long as they are speaking instead of writing, but the act of translating their thoughts to paper often trips them up. The burden of the blank page and a class assignment can causes students to break out the “indeed”s and pile extra words into sentences. The comment “awkward” (i.e., “see what you wrote differently”) isn’t as effective as giving them a new perspective that demands them to see the writing
differently—don’t forget the value of constraints for breaking out of the POLR. Overall, I have found the best practices for revision constraints to be 1) make it simple, 2)
encourage use in peer review and 3) follow up, by email, in person, or in class when you can.
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