Revision Strategies of Deaf Student Writers

Deaf high school students at different schools shared second drafts of their own narratives via an electronic bulletin board after conferencing with their repective teachers. This article characterizes the kinds of questions teachers asked during the conferences and the kinds of revisions the students made between first and second drafts. Results indicate that teachers most often ask questions that require student to provide more information; yet these questions do not affect revision as much as questions which require students to rephrase specific language. Students typically either added or substituted words or phrases that showed both similarities to and differences from the revision patterns of inexperienced writers with normal hearing. In the majority of cases, trained readers rated the deaf students' revised drafts better than their first attempts, signifying the central role revision plays in the composition process.