Teacher Editing, Part 2

Teacher editing happens in our ESL Young Writers writing workshops just before students prepare the final draft of their personal experience pieces. It is the last of several interventions we make in the students’ writing process. The first intervention is during rehearsal and the second is when students take their finished first drafts to a content conferencing group.

In content conferencing, authors read their work aloud for peer response. Listeners ask questions to resolve any confusion they sense and help authors realize changes that would make their second drafts more effective and clearer. To put everyone on the same playing field of ideas and organization, no one is allowed to comment about anyone’s English at this stage. There’s a real stigma in Sierra Leone about making mistakes in English, and we don’t tolerate such ridicule in our clubs.

It is the group’s responsibility help authors tell their stories clearly. A facilitator should be present in every content conference to make sure the students are asking “why” and “how” or “I didn’t understand” questions for discussion, rather than flinging out gotchas (What is your father’s name? How many doctors were in the hospital? What time was it?) Once the student discussion has petered out, the facilitator can ask any important questions that the students may not have thought of. The whole interactive process is an extremely important part of the language learning that goes on in the club.

I am coming around to the point made in Part 1, that facilitators feel too much pressure during teacher editing just before the final draft. In trying to edit both storytelling and written devices, they actually pay more attention to mechanical errors such as punctuation and capitalization. Therefore, I think we will move in our Young Writers clubs toward editing grammatical storytelling devices in our content conferences. Facilitators can raise one or two of the following discourse-level language points they hear a need for, and specify the place in the story where they heard this problem(s). The whole group would benefit from a discussion of these factors that affect their oral delivery:

o   Avoid repeating a noun you have recently mentioned—use a pronoun instead.

o   First use indefinite articles (some, a, a lot of) to refer to an unknown object or person; then use a definite article (the) to refer to it.

o   Use sequence-signaling words like later, ago, and before, as well as time expressions like at night and the next morning to make chronology clear.

o   Tell your story in the past tense, primarily.

o   Distinguish the meanings of but, so and and.

o   If you want to use a person’s name in the story, introduce it the first time that person is mentioned and then continue to use the name from then on.

Note that the list contains only discourse-level grammar strategies. They are the glue—the cohesion and coherence—that makes content and organization hang together.  That’s why they belong in a content conference.

Following the content conference, students go on to revision, or writing a second draft that incorporates their changes. Every second draft should go back to the group for a second content conference, to check that the revision happened. Only those Young Writers who have made good strides with revision should move on to self-, peer-, and then an easier teacher editing.

Teacher Editing, Part I

I think teacher editing is the hardest part of ESL writing-workshop facilitating for traditionally-trained teachers to learn. 

Teacher editing in Young Writers clubs centers not on everything the teacher knows, but on the student’s voice. Ideally during teacher editing, students read aloud to the teacher, who helps them listen to themselves. The photo here from REC Primary in Bassa Town, shows what this looks like. I love watching children's growing awareness of their oral pauses and stops and shouts, and the satisfaction they get from punctuating these. Often, I’ll call an author back to a word that she has just corrected as she read aloud without noticing that the written form didn’t match what she said.

Yet what we see more often is students emerging from teacher editing sessions with whole sentences—even whole series of sentences—heavily crossed out and replaced by the teachers’ “improved” versions. This bothers me because I see a frustration in those teachers’ bold stripes drawn across the paper that I don’t feel when I’m doing teacher editing, but it bothers me more because of the effect it has on the students:

• It dampens their spirits—the last thing at-risk students need.
• It stifles their voices. Many of our club members come to us barely literate, but when they are asked to relate their true personal experiences, a voice comes to the fore. One of our most deep-seated instincts is to tell others about something that has happened to us. That instinct must have enhanced early communities’ chances of survival, but we tap into it in our clubs in order to help students connect that narrative voice to writing. It is our job to keep that exposed instinct safe.
• It can lower the quality of the children’s writing. Teacher language generally stomps in with social proprieties and with categories that sweep details under the carpet, both of which distance us from the scenes the children are painting.
• It has no instructional value. You don’t acquire language by copying someone else’s sentences into a final draft. Teacher language carries complex sentences and vocabulary that are not yet part of the students’ proficiency. True, they are sometimes acquired on the writing edge in the club, but they are more the domain of the language arts class.

The point of the writing club is for the students to learn to record their low-intermediate ESL oral voices on paper so well that anyone who reads their work aloud can reiterate their storytelling. That means they must learn to use storytelling devices such as sequence signaling and the appropriate verb tenses; along with written devices such as paragraphing, inverted commas, and exclamation marks. People want to read their experiences because they have so much to say. The literacy and literary skills we are teaching them will be with them for life. They will transfer to any other language in which they become literate. On top of all this, do the students have to talk like teachers, too?

Editing—The Thinking Game

Don't let anyone tell you that writing isn't a thinking game! I think these students from the Northern Province have no doubts: you come to a Young Writers club meeting to think.

The two Young Writers above have reached the peer editing stage. Plenty of meticulous attention and even more discussion will be thrown onto the table before they're through. It's all worth it, because they'll proceed to their teacher conferences not with dread, but with confidence.

One sticking point that comes up during editing is punctuation of direct speech. Mastering it is a challenge for everybody.

The class you see here is trying to punctuate a whole conversation in a mini-lesson at the beginning of our workshop. They must lay it out in paragraphs and not repeat in the dialogue what they've already said in the narrative. Then, they are to go on to see if the final drafts they're submitting meet these standards.

I thank every one of these students for their effort and know it will pay off in learning growth. It's a delight to be around them.