Perl and Sommers reading response

Both authors conducted studies to distinguish patterns in the way students write. This was done primarily by studying the process of revision. Sondra Perl's study focuses on five students who termed themselves as poor writers and followed the methods they used throughout the writing process. As with Murray's study, Perl operates under the assumption that her audience is full of teachers and offers her suggestions more along the lines of how to help students overcome difficulties in composition. She feels the research itself in the area of composition studies is limited and that her own study is no different in this manner. In fact, the very last part of her study concentrates on one student only. One could argue this makes the data highly unreliable. That aside, I found that Perl offers suggestions of the more practical sort, although she does occassionally leave the reader to grapple with her meaning. Perl does make every attempt to be as thorough as possible in her study. She defines a code system and assigns each student a code accordingly. After the code is assigned, she then goes on to make observations about the pattern of writing each student possesses.

The piece of Nancy Sommers, while equally useful to the instructor, concentrates less on patterns. Author Sommers states the view that revision is not as well used through the process of writing as it could be. As opposed to leaving revision as a final step in the writing process, she feels that it should be used throughout. It is her view that revision is what firmly establishes writing as different from speech. Revision should not be limited to what the writer has already stated. The writer should not be held to what he has already put down on paper. Is there something else he was trying to say? Rather than merely clarifying and explaining further the concepts already established in a paper, Sommers feels the author should have a chance to modify meaning as well. Further in the article Sommers further demonstrates this theory by stating that thesis statements can restrict the meaning of a what a student is trying to say. Instead of allowing ideas to expand, a thesis narrows the focus too much, sometimes so much that the student cannot find anything else to say and is therefore stuck with the words he has already uttered.