Transferring what the writer knows into the mind of the reader

One of the hardest skills to teach child writers is to give enough information to make the reader know what the writer knows.  Young children expect their readers to know what they mean.  “Well, everybody knows he’s my brother.  I don’t need to say that.”

I was having a conversation with a fifth grader who was writing a first draft about golf clubs and was considering what to say about loft.

“Don’t the woods have more loft?” I asked.  “They hit the ball the farthest.”

“No, shorter clubs have more loft because the face tips back.  The more it tips back, the more loft it has.”

“Maybe you should explain that.”

“Why? All golfers know that.”

“Yes, but I’m not a golfer and I’m going to be reading your essay.”

Some parents think students should write their essays alone, and that I should become involved later, during revising, not while students are writing a first draft.

But sometimes the most important work I can do as a writing tutor, is to make the student consider what his audience knows and doesn’t know, to put the student in the shoes of the reader.  I told the student above that if I were Rory McIlroy reading his essay, he wouldn’t need to explain loft because Rory McIlroy knows all about loft.  (He was impressed that I knew who Rory McIlroy was.)  But since I have played only miniature golf, I told my student, I don’t know about loft.

Because of this “gap” between what the student knows and what the student writes, I find it useful to sit next to a student when he or she writes the first draft.  I let the student write a few sentences, and then we discuss them—sometimes for grammar or tone, but often for knowledge the student is not sharing but which the reader needs to know to understand the essay.

Discussing the “gap” while the student is writing allows the student to fix it in the early stages of writing, rather than finishing a draft and then needing to make big changes later on.  Clarifying information during the composing process saves time and effort later.

As the old proverb says, “A stitch in time saves nine.”