Revision Types and Their Effects on Writing: A Case Study of Korean College Students

The present study investigated in-depth the revision behaviors of six Korean college students during English composition across three revision sessions over a semester and identified: (1) the types and the frequencies of revisions made by Korean learners of English; (2) the effect of each revision type on writing quality; and (3) the factors affecting students' revision behavior. The analyses showed that Korean college students made twice as many revisions on features concerning grammar and expression than on aspects relating to ideas and structure. While the students made more revisions in the second session than in the first, they made fewer revisions in the third session, possibly due to heavy workload near the semester end. However, the number of Type 3 revision (extension/reduction of idea units) increased consistently across sessions. Type 3 and 4 revisions, involving global and meaning-level changes, were found to be strongly associated with improvement in the quality of the subsequent drafts. As for the factors affecting students' revision behavior, students' perception on the benefits of revision was found to be more influential over other factors such as students' L2 proficiency and prior revision experiences.