Research Report: Better Writers: Writing Center Tutoring and the Revision of Rough Drafts
James H. Bell · Journal of College Reading and Learning · 2002
Do undergraduate students who attend one-to-one writing conferences on rough drafts improve as writers? To answer this, Faigley and Witte's (1981) taxonomy of revision changes was used to compare intermediate and final drafts, and Reigstad's (1980/1981) and Hock, Deshler, and Schumaker's (1999) typologies of tutoring were used to describe the tutoring. The first year focused on peer tutors, but because they edited most drafts during sessions, few changes remained for students to make; thus the study could not say whether the students became better writers. The second year focused on a professional tutor who used an instructional approach, and 68% of revisions were made after the sessions. Sixty-five percent of revisions made afterwards were in line with conference objectives, and 82% of these changes were positive, suggesting that the tutoring directed the revision and that the students became better writers.