Blog Post#10: Reflective Writing and the Revision Process
Hi everyone! I just got off reading through 15+ pages of the chapter 'Reflective Writing and the Revision Process: What Were You Thinking?' from the book 'Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing' today and I could not wait to share my first thoughts about it! The author, Sandra Giles highlights that reflective writing is an activity that asks to think about our own thinking. It helps us in the revision aspect of writing an essay. She mentions a process called “Letter to the Reader”, wherein students write to their readers explaining their purpose, how they want the effect their readers, describe their process and talk about their peer evaluations. This process allows them to see where they have errors and what needs to be fixed within their essay.
The author mentions that reflective writing is a way for a writer to become an “independent learner” and learn from their own mistakes, thus helping with their revision process. Reflective essays also help a writer see what improvements are needed of them. The reflective writings essentially lead a writer to their revision process. With the reflection, a writer has easier access to their mistakes, thus making their revision much more easier.
The author finally mentions that not only will reflective writing help us in writing classes, but in any future writing projects.
In fact, I came across something similar while reading about a chapter on 'Evaluation and Revision' by Charles A. MacArthur from the book 'Best Practices in Writing Instruction' by Steve Graham, Charles A. MacArthur, et al. In the chapter, one of the important things the authors mention is the cognitive models of revising wherein they highlight some of the things proficient writers do when they revise. One of the things the authors mention is that proficient writers have relatively sophisticated goals for revising. They see revising as a metter of evaluating all aspects of their writing whether they have achieved their goals and purposes or not. They look for opportunities to expand their ideas and clearly convey them. Here is the link to the chapter:
There is also an interesting video on this topic that gives an introduction to reflective writing and things to help make the most of the reflection process.