Revising and pausing in relation to syntactic development

The aim of this paper is to explore revision by recording how editing patterns develop with age and experience. The data consist of 135 expository texts, collected in an experimental setting, using key-logging that records the writing, including editing and pausing behaviour. The participants were divided into five age groups: 10-year-olds (n=20), 13-year-olds (n=20), 15-year-olds (n=20), 17-year-olds (n=20) and adult university students (n=55). A subgroup of the adults (n=16) consisted of ‘experts’ who worked with texts professionally. This investigation focusses on the 7 051 pauses which occurred in connection with editing, here defined as the use of delete, arrow keys or mouse. The ‘editing pauses’ were coded for grammatical context, preceding and following the pause. Findings reveal that several editings often occur together, and that this phenomenon increases with age and expertise. For all groups, editings occur to a great extent between sentences. However, writers from 17-year-olds and upwards, are more mobile, i.e. they are not solely concerned with editing the immediately written text, but the changes are being carried out on a more global text level. In the group of ‘expert adults’, sometimes more than 40 % of the total writing time is devoted to editing the previously written text. The findings in this study show clearly that the editing behaviour develops far into adulthood. Educationally, this has implications for teaching methods on writing in general and on text editing in particular