Making Comments

First, I look for things that move me. What makes me smile, or feel sympathy or empathy? Which images stand out? Always, I’m looking at what effect the piece has on me, as the reader. I ask myself, “What did the writer do to have that effect on me?”

Second, I keep in the back of my mind things that learners are having trouble with, and I look for examples of where someone has done it well. Someone who has written a paragraph with perfect punctuation always gets a mention for that, as does an English language learner who has written a whole perfect sentence.

How do I comment on writing from English Language Learners?

If I want to encourage people to do more careful proofreading, I comment on a piece with very few errors: “You have done some good proofreading here. I see you are thinking about periods and missing words and spelling. It makes your writing easy to follow because I can concentrate on your story. I don’t get distracted by wondering what you meant to say.”

All my training in finding errors and noticing weaknesses does not go to waste. The errors I silently notice help me decide what to look for. I look for someone who has done it well, and seize on it when I find it. For example, if I notice that many learners do not write in paragraphs, or make incorrect or rough paragraph breaks, I find someone who has done it correctly, and concentrate on that.

“Look at this,” I say, “Marvin has three paragraphs here. What time is it in this first paragraph? That’s right, the morning. What time is it in the second paragraph? Right, it’s that night. And the last paragraph? Yes, it’s the next day. So Marvin helped us understand that time was passing by starting a new paragraph each time. And notice how it looks on the page—so much easier to read than one big, long story. It makes me want to dive in, because I can see that he has organized it for me.”

Another learner may have paragraphs that each talk about a particular person, or a particular point. Explaining in detail how a couple of learners divided their work into paragraphs has been much more effective than teaching a lesson on paragraphing from an outline or using a printed text, even though the printed text will be more correct than a learner’s work. When it comes to facilitating learning, the swirl of positive emotions in the room is always more effective than the textbook example.

You can start from just a glimpse of good practice, and expect it to expand and improve over the weeks.

One day, when I was wanting to help learners vary their sentence structure and break out of the habit of one simple sentence after another, I seized upon one learner’s work that had a question in it.

After Brad had read his piece out loud, I seized on something that changed the monotonous rhythm that had been set up. “Look at this question!” I exclaimed. “It woke me right up. My ears were hearing da da dah! da da dah! da da dah! and getting into a routine, when suddenly I heard something different. The question has a different rhythm. That change in rhythm made me pay attention to the question. And then I had to think of my answer, too, so I had to do a little work. Then Brad gave his answer, and I could compare it to my answer. I was surprised that our answers were so different, and that made the whole thing more interesting. All from that one little question.”

On the next assignment, two or three more learners tried out questions, and in the writing group I exclaimed over all of them as variations in sentence structure. I talked about what the question did to make me involved in the writing. The next week, out of fourteen learners, eight used questions, and I was able to guide a more in-depth discussion of the use of questions. What work does a question do at the beginning of a story? at the end? in the middle? What difference does it make if you give an answer to the question, or just leave it for the reader to answer? What effect does it have if it is the kind of question that has no answer?

It is one of the joys of the method to watch as learners learn from your feedback and follow the models set by other learners in the group. The effect of your very explicit feedback is multiplied when it is given in the writing group for all to hear, and learners’ growth is visible not only to you, but to the learners themselves.