A 19th-century Editing Task: "writing" On The State Examinations

By Author: Amandda
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In schools in my community, conceptions of editing are far more likely to be driven by the editing task on state English tests for third, fifth, and seventh graders than by Wikipedia. Although the heading in the examination book reads, "Part 2: Writing," the task does not require the generation of new text. Instead, students are directed to correct mistakes in a paragraph purportedly composed by a peer (see Figure 1). This item is worth 3 of 41 total points, with students receiving full credit if "no more than 1 error, either introduced or not corrected, remains" after their corrections.

When the editing task first appeared in 2005, I observed an immediate impact on local practice. In schools in my community, conceptions of editing are far more likely to be driven by the editing task on state English tests for third, fifth, and seventh graders than by Wikipedia. Although the heading in the examination book reads, "Part 2: Writing," the task does not require the generation of new Tag Heuer Replica Watches text. Instead, students are directed to correct mistakes in a paragraph purportedly ...
... composed by a peer (see Figure 1). This item is worth 3 of 41 total points, with students receiving full credit if "no more than 1 error, either introduced or not corrected, remains" after their corrections.

When the editing task first appeared in 2005, I observed an immediate impact on local practice. Feeling considerable (and understandable) pressure to prepare students for the new task but receiving little guidance from the state about how to do so, many teachers turned to what Anderson (2005) called "correct-alls": whole-class editing sessions—often us?ing prepackaged programs—of passages with myriad errors. My student teachers were also increasingly required to integrate exercises from grammar workbooks into their lessons. These instructional patterns persist, especially in classrooms with high percentages of students who struggle with the editing task (e.g., English-language learners).

These responses are not just problematic because they reduce class time for students' genuine writing. More fundamentally, the state task and teachers' responses to it construct editing in the narrowest way possible: as an individual attempt to "fix" discrete errors about which there can be no debate. Far from engaging students in complex digital literacies, the editing task does not Replica Tag Heuer Watches even allow them to employ the grammar check embedded in most word processing programs—a resource that nearly every writer outside of a testing context can use. Furthermore, the task divorces proofreading from other composition processes, not to mention issues about authorial intent or audience. I can imagine Laura Ingalls in Little House on the Prairie, the television series set in the 19th century, making similar corrections to error-filled sentences on her slate.