The computer-assisted revision strategies of six non-native freshman writers : a comparative analysis from published accounts of native writers

The purpose of this experimental study is to determine what revision strategies are employed by ESL students as they compose and revise their papers on word processors, and to determine if these strategies are similar to or different from the strategies employed by native writers. Several criteria were used to judge the between-draft revisions: the changes were analyzed by type of change (meaning-preserving or meaning-altering); level of change (from surface to multiple sentence level); operation (addition, deletion, substitution, permutation, distribution, and consolidation); and the effectiveness of the change toward producing a solid final draft. Thirty drafts written by six advanced ESL students enrolled in English 131 at the University of Tennessee in Spring 1989 were studied. Analysis of 1,328 revisions and a comparison of the results of this study with the results of published studies done on native writers indicated that revealed that these ESL writers revise much like their native-speaking peers. Like Bridwell's writers (1980), the ESL writers made nearly 55% of their revisions at the surface and word level; they did however, make more surface changes than the native writers. This study found no correlation between the stage at which a writer makes a revision and the quality of the final product. There may be a correlation, however, between certain composing behaviors and the writer's skill. As Faigley and Witte (1981) observed of their writers, the less-skilled writers in this study were preoccupied with local concerns in their texts from the outset; the more advanced writers initially worked on meaning in their papers and turned to editing near the end of the process. The majority of the changes made by students in this study were in additions to their texts, which Sommers (1980) suggests is the operation used most by skilled writers. The findings of this study indicate that in many instances the revising strategies of advanced ESL students who work on computers do not differ significantly from the strategies of native writers. These findings of this pilot study also have several important implications for further research in the field of ESL composition. The difficulties presented in this kind of research are explored.