Reading as a Writing and Revising Strategy [microform] / Cynthia L. Selfe

To explore the role of one specific revision strategy--reading and rereading pieces of text--in the composing process, case studies were made of two college freshman writers: Jim, who was highly apprehensive about the process of composing, and David, who was not at all apprehensive about writing. Specifically, videotapes of the students' composing aloud processes were examined and transcripts of interviews with the two students were reviewed to see how they used reading as they wrote. Findings revealed that Jim did not use reading to discover and articulate his thoughts. David, on the other hand, interrupted his writing more frequently than did Jim to read what he had written, and also employed a much wider range of reading strategies. Reading seemed to serve David as a multipurpose writing strategy, a catalyst that helped him make decisions about the rhetorical effectiveness of his prose, his audience and their needs, the purpose of his paper, and the grammatical problems he recognized. Jim's and David's reading activities also differed dramatically after they finished their first drafts. David spent more time engaged in rereading portions of his completed first drafts and used rereading as a strategy for "re-seeing" his paper. (HOD)