response to Perl and Sommers

The first thing that jumped out about Sondra Perl's article was actually her title specficially categorizing a group of people as "unskilled". Perl made some distinctions at the end of her study when talking about the implications for teaching where she tried to distinguish unskilled writers from remedial or beginner writers. I suppose I can understand some of the reasons that Perl dislikes the implications of both of those titles, the student's writing shouldn't necessarily be viewed as wrong or something to fix and hopefully the student's don't enter a college classroom with a blank slate of writing knowledge for teachers to work with. I preferred Sommers term, "student writers" or to be more specific a variant of her other group might be appropriate. Something along the lines of "less experienced student writers" might describe the student's studied in a more respectful manner.
The goals and questions presented by Perl were actually quite interesting and I'm curious to know if the conclusions Perl drew were followed up on in the 30 years since her study was conducted. Answering question 3 might be the most measureable and most important goal. Question three asks- What does an increased understanding of their (the "unskilled students") processes (of writing) suggest about the nature of composing in general and the manner in which writing is taught in school?
For someone interested in following up on Perl's research the author does a nice job laying out her terms, methods and the conclusion she drew for her case study. Someone not interested in this line of research might get tied up in trying to understand every detail.
Nancy Sommers compared the writing and revising styles of student writers and experienced adult writers. She spent a lot of time describing her experiment but the most critical part seemed to be when she reported back the responses students and expericed writers had given her regarding revision. Sommers pointed out the distinct difference between the student's revision practices which included redoing, marking out, and reviewing grammar and the experienced writers who were more concerned with theme, form or shape of their article. Sommers suggested that students become to focused on the narrow picture when they are asked to revise their papers and this explained the differences between the two groups interpretation of the term. Sommers article could be used both by teachers in a classroom or for follow up research. While she doesn't lay out exactly what she did in the way that Perl did it is clear that an academic audience would understand how she drew the conclusions that she did.