A comparision of the revising processes of spanish speakers and english native writerssimilarities and differences.

Resumo

The aim of the investigation is to portray a composite picture of the expert and novice native and non-native writers' composing and revising processes as the wrote an argumentative essays in English. Analyses of the experienced and novice writers' revision processes served to answer four main question posed at the beginning of the experimental study: 1. When did revision occur duringt the composing process? 2. Were there any similarities and differences in the categories of revision the subjects employed? 3. Were there any similarities and differences in the techniques the subjects employed? and 4. Were there any similarities and differences in the purpose of the subjects' revisions? the results indicate that the experienced and novice native and non-native writers in this study made changes in the first an second writing sessions, in the four writing cycles, and in the combinations predraft/first draft and final draft/final draft, although they revised to different extends. Both writer groups coincided in their preference for the word level overt the surface, phrase, clause, sentence, paragrapf and global levels. The experienced subjects, however, revised at the higher discourse levels more often than the novice writers did. No important differences were concluded between both writer types in the techiniques used for revising. Per porposes of revision, both the expert and novice writers revised with an informational purpose in mind, although they differed in their preference for the rest of purpose of revision: while the expert writers made higher proportions of meaning revisions, the novice showed a tendency for formal changes. Further similarities and differences were recorded between the expert native and non-ntiva writers and between the novice nativa and non-native writers.