The Effects of the Timing of Revisions on the Japanese Writing of High School Students

Abstract

The present study examined whether students improved their text quality by revising after one month as opposed to revising after one day. In the first experiment, 27 high school first graders wrote two compositions, and revised one the next day, and the other after one month. It was found that in the case of revising one month later, students increased the number of words, made more text-based revisions, and raised the text quality. On the other hand, in the case of revising one day later, they made almost no changes. Furthermore, these effects were apparent in the case of students whose text quality was low. In the second experiment, 30 high school third graders, 28 of whom estimated that they were poor at writing, revised their texts after one month and improved the text quality. These results suggest that delayed revision raised the text quality of high school students, and that it was an effective revision strategy for students who were weak in writing.