By Professor Debra Myhill, Director of the Centre for Research in Writing, Pro-Vice Chancellor and Executive Dean, The University of Exeter
Reading through our interviews with professional writers – acting as Co-Mentors in partnership with schoolteachers on our Teachers as Writers research project – I am struck by the variety of words that are used to describe the process of creating text. These include: drafting, rewriting, reviewing, revising, editing and proof-reading. Apart from proof-reading which is consistently used to refer to the final checking of the accuracy of the writing in terms of spelling and punctuation, the other words are often used inter-changeably with no clear distinction between them. What is clear is that this process of moving from ideas in the head, to words on a page, through to a finished piece is a messy process, or a recursive process, as the cognitive psychologists would term it. Continue reading “Writing and Rewriting”