Why Share the Writing?

An audience is essential to a writing learner because in our world we write to communicate. When a learner writes for the practitioner’s eyes only, the act of writing becomes something else: a task to be done, a product to be judged and marked, a throwaway. When learners know that, as a general rule, I plan to share their writing with the group, they concentrate on communicating with the group, because the group is their audience.

If you are working one-to-one, it is more difficult, but still possible, to find opportunities to share writing with other learners or with a wider audience. For some suggestions, see Working One-to-One: Making Opportunities for Sharing.

Whether you are working one-to-one or with a group, opportunities to publish learners’ work to a larger audience abound. Writing for a collection of learners’ writing to be given away at an event provides powerful motivation for editing and proofreading. 

Sharing Learners' Writing in the Larger Community 

When writing is shared with a larger circle than the writing group, there is an opportunity for revising that first draft and polishing it up. The larger audience and the fact of being published both provide motivation to edit and proofread, to move from a first draft to a final form.

Every published writer works with an editor. Learners whose work is being published also need an editor to make sure they look good in print. Practitioners can work one-to-one with learners to make the punctuation and spelling perfect, while not losing the wording and the voice of the original. It is the time for the practitioner to do the proofreading, not just encourage the learner to do it.

Meaningful Consent

When we make opportunities for learners’ writing to be shared more broadly, consent becomes an important issue, especially if names are attached.

Your program may have a policy and a consent form for learners to sign, but it is important that learners also understand the possible consequences and give knowledgeable consent. What is the difference between putting their writing on the net and publishing it in a booklet that has only 50 copies printed? What if they run for office one day, and their opponent finds their story on the net? What is the advantage of using initials or a fake name?

Some of the activities suggested as Writing Opportunities That Involve Editing and Polishing for Real Occasions are events that you might want to invite the press to attend. Special precautions must be taken in that case because most people, not just learners, don’t understand the possible consequences of talking to the press. For example, a student of mine gave a long interview to the local newspaper about his life and how he came to be in our program. The story was on the front page, with pictures. It was a great story, admiring of the learner, and generally very accurate, but the reporter or the headline writer called him “illiterate,” a word which we never used, and which he found insulting.