The Sequential Organization of Revisions

Analyzing writing conferences of German-speaking high school students

Abstract

The writing conference is a frequently used method at all levels of German-speaking schooling. It aims at eliciting peer feedback: In small groups, students read previously written texts to one another, once in full and then sentence by sentence. Students should be able to revise their texts based on the feedback they receive in these two rounds.

This article conceptualizes writing conferences as conversations. In parts of these conversations, students revise their texts. Using Conversation Analysis, this article describes the sequential organization of these revisions. The study is based on 132 revision sequences originating from 12 writing conferences (10 hours of video material) at upper secondary level.

Students organize their revisions around the adjacency pair ‘Establish revision directive’ and ‘Carry out revision’. The adjacency pair can be expanded at every position, with the expansions having position-specific functions.