My fall semester students averaged thirty minutes revision per paper. Of my winter semester students, six students spent thirty minutes in revision, six spent an hour, and thirteen spent more than an hour. Several writers of journal articles concerning computers and composition have felt that computers did nothing to improve in-depth revision. I incorporated activities that capitalized on the ease of revision the computer offered. Weekly I invited the students to bring their rough drafts from the word processor to class and either in groups or pairs revise each others' papers.
Computers make revision almost enjoyable.
Editing errors are surface errors dealing with punctuation, typographical, spelling, and word choice errors. We talked about how these kinds of errors distract from a paper but usually aren't the paper's downfall. I also pointed out that software is available that can check most of these problems for them. I found that the students needed guide sheets, or at least a set of questions to answer, to get them started seeing revision. But my winter semester looked on the group work as a chance to revise their papers before I put on the grade.