The Idea of an Essay, Volume 2

186 writing I did in that class was not revised, outside of minor grammar and spelling, because it was raw creativity—exactly what the teacher wanted. The stories and poems, once written, found their way into my mother’s stash of memorabilia from my childhood, and have yet to be read again. Having creative writing classes would not allow for students to be motivated then, because they only express a very narrow part of their lives, and with no final motivation. The second part of the solution that teachers can implement is restricting the work to one paper. While this sounds rather foolish and rash, the outcome would be much better-processed papers. In her article “Revision Strategies of Student Writers and Experienced Adult Writers,” Nancy Sommers discusses the differences between writers in schools and those who have practiced writing for a long time. Those who had practiced revised their essays much more, deleting and re-arranging pages and paragraphs, in contrast to the student writers who would revise sentences or words (382-385). The comparison makes the distinction that the experienced writers are motivated to revise their work more because they have rethought it from different angles, given the paper time, and have established their thoughts on the topic. The advantage of having one paper for the composition course would be that students could continually revise their single essay all semester. Having one topic, one essay, and several deadlines to turn in revisions, all while being taught how to revise thoroughly would allow students to write to the best of their ability, dedicating time to one paper, and motivating them to have a nearly “perfect” essay in the end. The motivation would allow the student to understand the ideas that they have, as well as further their interests in the topic of choice. Some teachers take the opposite approach to writing courses, requiring students to write several papers to get the maximum practice possible. This approach while pressuring students to put out many papers, ultimately would not work in motivating the students, as the students would not spend much time with each paper, only revising slightly before they were forced to turn in the next paper. The large load would also seem insurmountable, and would discourage students from writing, rather than motivating them to try to perfect their work. Finally, the third part of the solution would be the purpose of the paper. I will define the purpose as who will see the paper, and