Revising for meaning: Effects of knowledge and strategy.

Two experiments examined developmental and individual differences in students' revising for meaning. In Experiment 1, the authors investigated effects of knowledge of topic and knowledge of error location on revising done by middle school and college students. Knowledge of topic helped with meaning-level revising but did not seem necessary when surface-level editing was the goal. More interesting, knowledge of error location helped college students with both editing and revising but focused middle school students on editing at the expense of revising. In Experiment 2, the authors used a dyad-discussion design to investigate further differences in reading strategies during revising. The authors listened as pairs of 7th-grade students of different writing abilities (high, middle, and low) collaboratively revised. The results of Experiment 2 were consistent with the outcomes in Experiment 1, that is, knowing error location may focus less sophisticated writers too narrowly and thereby impede meaning-based revision.