Once a writer has chosen a topic and has become interested in this topic for his essay and has overcome writer's block, then he gets to the fun stuff of exploring his topic. Introverted One-Drafters do their internal revision of searching for the meaning and purpose of their essay in their heads. Introverted One-Drafters (people who visualize their paper in their head before writing it down) then visualize the essay many times in their heads and have many different fun versions of their essay. Meanwhile, Extroverted Multi-Drafters (those who explore ideas through writing multiple drafts) sit down to explore ideas while searching for meaning, purpose, content and audience as they undergo internal revision.
When a writer undergoes internal revision, he is exploring the topic of his essay. He is searching for the internal meaning of what he wants to write about. He asks himself, what will I be writing about? How will this piece of writing change my or anybody else's life? What kind of structure should I use? What will be my thesis statement? So, the focus is on meaning, purpose, audience, content, organization, and genre.
Therefore, internal revision involves developing the meaning of the essay and exploring how the essay will take shape. This is the stage where you research your thesis statement to revise your opinion of the thesis as you do your literature review.
The teacher's job is to guide the student as they undergo internal revision and to teach students the joy of writing and the fun of the exploration of different ideas through research. The teacher can model for students examples of good rhetoric so students undergoing internal revision know and learn how to write. I like to give students templates for good writing through flowcharts of the different writing genres of narrative essay, process essay, classification essay, or argumentative essay just to name a few.
Students can be placed in groups and they can peer review each other's work and help other students undergo and improve their internal and external revision. You can place the older more experienced writers with the younger less experienced writers so the better writers can help out the less experienced writers correct their essays so you can have a more learner centered classroom. The teacher can still give feedback if students want expert assistance.
Internal Revision is more fun and interesting than external revision (correction for grammar) because you are searching for meaning and trying to find a way to communicate your ideas to the world whereas external revision is just about correcting grammar errors and learning or remembering boring grammar rules. The teacher can make external revision of grammar rules more bearable by giving mini-lessons in grammar as Atwell in her book, Writing In the Middle advises. Keeping the lessons small then helps students retain their interest in writing the essay and helps students remember the grammar rule.
The reason why most students find external revision distasteful is that when they were in elementary school, the revision stage of an essay just involved the teacher pointing out errors you made in your essay. Some teachers used to read out to the class the errors students made in their essay and some insensitive teachers would even name out loud whose essay had the most errors embarrassing the student with the most errors. So, students by the time they get to college associate revision with punishment.
I remember when I was in elementary school, whenever a student misspelled a word in her essay, for homework, that student had to write that word a hundred times over and over again on a piece of paper. Or students would write out the misspelled word on the blackboard for all to see hundred times. This is why university students find it distasteful to do external revision.
By having a more student centered classroom, the teacher can make both internal and external revision a less punishing experience for the writing student and a more rewarding experience for all concerned.
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