Self-Evaluation Strategies of Extensive Revisers and Nonrevisers

drafts reflects their inability to effectively evaluate their own writing. The ability to effectively self-evaluate involves a willingness to be self-critical: to describe and judge one's writing from a detached, non-egocentric perspective and to trust one's own criteria for revising as valid. Because students learn to become dependent on the teacher's evaluation and because they are rarely given assistance in formal, systematic self-evaluation, many students do not develop the ability to critically evaluate their own writing. An important goal of composition instruction should be to encourage a change in students' thinking about their writing. By asking students to record their thoughts on tape or in writing before, during, and/or after writing each draft, teachers should be able to recognize changes in self-evaluation. Teachers often try to infer these changes from the students' writing, but these inferences could certainly be supported, modified, or rejected by data from students' selfevaluation.