Unskilled Children, Discovery, and Experience

Graves: I'm just going to say it...the note "Stops, rubs eyes" is adorable. There. Now I can move on. Besides being bored with the tables and charts, the results in this text were interesting. I was intrigued by the gender findings, in particular. For the most part, the results were expected, though I'm not sure exactly why. I was not surprised that boys did better in informal environments than girls. I just assumed that girls did better with a structured environment and assignment. Turns out my assumptions were correct. What I thought was most interesting is that the "boys seldom use the first person form in unassigned writing, especially the I form, unless they are developmentally advanced." My guess is that the topics the boys chose for unassigned writing tended to be fictional stories that they were telling in third-person narration because they were perhaps used to that sort of story-telling.

Perl: I really don't like these readings. I can't stand the coding. I just want everyone to know that it's taking every ounce of self-discipline for me to plow through these. Anyway, I saw a lot of basic mistakes that I've found myself making in these "unskilled" writers. The "reading-in" part, especially. Always a good idea to have someone else proof-read for that exact reason, but I guess I don't need to restate that.
Perl hit the "rule confusion" nail on the head, I thought. I've screwed up my writing plenty of times by mistrusting my initial written response to a prompt because I've been paranoid to break a cardinal grammar rule. This is another case where practice makes perfect (or organic, if I haven't driven that term into the ground yet). Using correct grammar and punctuation, while allowing your thoughts to flow freely onto the paper requires parts of practice and self-trust.
I did like how Perl focused on the unskilled writer and what teachers can do to improve their writing, rather than another study on habits of good writers. She's got the right idea, that Perl.

Flower & Hayes: "Myth of romantic inspiration"? That statement ticks me off. Maybe I am a Romantic. I'm just sick of reading these texts where the notion of inspiration is completely ruled out. I really can't tell what Flower and Hayes came up with, either. It seems like they pointed out some differences between "experts" and "novices" and then said, "Yep, we need to teach novices how to handle assignments like the experts do." This was my least favorite reading so far, by far.

Sommers: I am no good when it comes to revision. I was comforted to read that Sommers found that "students understand the revision process as a rewording activity" and that they "list repetition as one of the elements they most worry about." I completely agree. That's exactly what I think of it as. This is why I get confused when a teacher tells me to go back and "polish" my essay. Do I need to make different vocabulary choices? Are my sentences unclear? Have I used an adjective too often and inappropriately? Just telling me to "polish" something doesn't really tell me what is wrong with it.
Sommers is right about the writing process being nonlinear, to some degree. Even the essays we've read before say that students and writers often go back and reread and rethink parts of their paper as they are writing it.
So yeah, if I look at my essay as a whole, then I need to start looking at revising it as a whole too. I realize this. I am not, however, going to call my writing a "seed." That is lame.

I'm sorry. This blog is pretty negative, now that I've gone back and reread it. I guess I'm in a bad mood. It's this weather, I suppose.