April 2008

"Is it Done Yet?" Teaching Adolescents the Art of Revision by Barry Gilmore
Review written by Carm, RRVWP Teacher Consultant

I started reading Gilmore's book at a time when our school district was having English meetings and trying to talk about a scope and sequence for teaching grammar and writing. This book addresses how to teach students revision beginning with content: improving a thesis, revising introductions, improving organization, incorporating evidence, revising conclusions etc. That's just part of the book. Many of his ideas made a lot of sense. Sadly some of his student examples that were his "bad" examples were better than I think I could write. Okay, maybe that's an exaggeration, but if my students were writing that well, I'd hardly be complaining. Gilmore teaches AP students and this is very much a college prep level book. I am dealing with students working at a much lower level, yet, I think I could still, should still be trying to use some of these approaches and maybe I'd start to see some improvement. I would just need to find appropriate models that wouldn't leave the students overwhelmed.

The next biggest section of the book talked about revising style and this was also interesting. Here he talked about sentence combining, measuring the sentences and adding variety, scaling back words, adding clarity, using better verbs and adjectives and improving voice, among other things. Again there were gems all through this section, but there were also things that I thought were surprising. At one point he listed ten rhetorical devises kids will actually use. None of them, when listed in example form, seemed shocking or new to me, but here's a confession: I had never even HEARD of some of the descriptive labels of that rhetorical device. Where have I been? Here are the ten he suggests to give you an idea of what I mean: allusion (nothing wrong with that one, I teach it all the time), anadiplosis, anaphora, antithesis, asyndeton, chiasmus, ellipsis, metaphor, polysyndeton, tricolon. Obviously I understood ellipsis and metaphor as well, but the others were new "terms" even if the devices were familiar. Sheesh. Talk about humbling.

So, my assessment of this book is that it's worthwhile if you are truly wanting to rethink your approach to writing and revision in the classroom. It's best if you teach high school and even better if you teach AP or honors or freshmen in college. It is a little "pie in the sky" in some ways, but in others it's just humbling and I realize I'm not doing enough to support my students in their efforts at revision.