Children’s Revision of Textual Flaws

Abstract

Two studies are reported here that investigated elementary school children’s text revision. In the first experiment, both semantic and surface flaws were inserted in texts that varied in reading difficulty. Second-grade through fifth-grade students revised these experimenter-generated passages, presented as examples of submissions to a class newspaper. Differences in text reading difficulty did not affect revision effectiveness, nor were the semantic flaws especially difficult to detect and revise. An age effect showed growth in the revision of both semantic and surface errors from grades 2 to 4 with 2nd-graders revising one-third of the inserted errors, and 4th- and 5th-graders revising three-quarters of them. Revision and cloze reading comprehension skills were correlated. A second study compared students’ revision of their own as well as another’s text flaws. Fifth-graders wrote a narrative for a classroom anthology, and they revised both their own and inserted flaws. Their writing was evaluated holistically. Rates of both semantic and surface revision were somewhat lower for their own as opposed to another’s text errors, but revision rates were nevertheless relatively high, and they correlated with writing quality; that is, children who wrote high-quality texts also revised more errors, especially experimenter-inserted flaws. These data confirm that children respond positively to writing challenges in the area of revision, a skill in process of development, which is amenable to inspection and appears ripe for facilitation.