Green Squiggly Lines:

Writing Without Fear circa 1982: Word Processing

In the late 1980s, Gail Hawisher wrote two research overviews (1986, 1988) that combined to present a meta-analysis of forty articles covering word processing and writing studies from 1981-1987. While the articles that Hawisher examines do not focus exclusively on issues of teacher response and student revision, they do contain significant discussions about errors in student texts and revision processes. In the initial "Studies in Word Processing" (1986), Hawisher found that "in all these studies final drafts exhibited fewer errors" (p.16). However, she quickly challenges the findings of these twenty-four studies, noting, "committing and correcting more surface errors is different from making fewer errors" (p.16). Following the dominant logic of the process movement, Hawisher argues that "increased attention to errors, for example, might well detract from students' thinking, thereby lowering the overall quality of a piece of writing" (p.16).

This hostility toward surface-error correction as disingenuous editing or revising and as an inadequate form of learning amplifies the ideas presented in Sommers's "Responding to Student Writing" (1982) and Lil Brannon and Cy Knoblauch's "On Students' Right to Their Own Texts: A Model of Teacher Response" (1982). Sommers, Brannon, and Knoblauch had argued that teacher commentary and student revision should create opportunities to encourage reflection upon-and change-the "deep" structures within student writing rather than engage in corrections of mere surface errors.