A decade ago, English teacher David Narter had a revelation. One of his students had asked for extra guidance on her writing. She and Narter, a teacher at the Leyden High Schools, outside Chicago, sat down to review an essay of hers that he’d marked up. Narter started by simply reading his comments aloud. To his surprise, that process made a big difference.
In an article for the English Journal, Narter recounts how the student found his feedback more encouraging when he expressed it orally. As his student explained to him, “When I see the writing all over the paper, it just sounds like you’re saying, ‘You’re a bad writer.’ But now I feel like I can actually write this.”
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