How we learn

We’re working on a major revamp of our courses programme at the moment. Lots to do but, in due course, plenty to announce. One of the things that we’ve been thinking about a lot is simply: how do we learn?

A good, obvious first stage answer is simply: deliver useful information appealingly presented.

Hence, our blogs, our books, our (premium) video courses. Those things obviously appeal, because the blogs get read, the books get bought, the courses get taken.

But?

The learning model that underlies that basic approach feels, in some ways, a bit Victorian. It feels like I’m a Victorian schoolmarm, sweeping up and down a dais in my long skirts, telling a whole room full of silent pupils what they are meant to do. And that’s the issue: the pupils in this model are silent, not doing.

So we adapt our model.

We combine instruction with doing. So, here’s a particular topic (characterisation, or plotting, or prose style or whatever) and here is an assignment which will help you develop the skills in question.

And good, that’s already better. My How To Write video course (available to Premium members) doesn’t have homework assignments exactly, but it does hugely emphasise the practical. The approximate message is, “Here’s an easily learned technique which you can apply to your manuscript right now and which will definitely improve it.” The feedback I most appreciate on this course is anything which says, “I had to stop watching the video so I could mess around with my manuscript.” That’s perfect. That’s exactly the kind of reaction I wanted to generate.

But …?

Our schoolroom has got better, but it’s still imperfect. The ranks of kids (grubby-kneed boys, some alarmingly pinafored girls) are now bending over their schoolbooks and practising their skills, but isn’t there something strange about the silence?

A modern classroom isn’t quiet. It’s noisy. It’s productive. It’s social.

It’s a commonplace to say that writing is a solitary activity, and I suppose it is. But writers are generally a tad introvert (I am) and the idea of a solitary activity being a bad one has never really made much sense to me. I like writing. That’s why I do it.

But writing is one thing, learning is another. The social element in learning brings a kind of glue. My kids run off to school eagerly each morning, not because they’re desperate for another spelling test, but because they want to see their friends. If learning becomes a social task, it becomes easier to do. Less an act of will than a pleasure in itself.

There’s something else here as well.

Analysing weaknesses in your own book is an emotional endeavour. Your instinct is to avoid finding fault. But with your friends and fellow students? Ha. Let’s be honest, finding fault is part of the pleasure. “Ah yes, love that extract, but I did wonder if maybe …” (Insert knife, twist, repeat).

The opportunity to look at work other than your own gives you a kind of safe-play area. The more you practise, the better you get. That’s why our peer-to-peer courses (like our Write With Jericho one, again just for premium members) offer a step-up on the basic model. We have instruction, we have assignments, we have a social, interactive peer-to-peer element as well.

Great.

But …?

There’s a reason why we have teachers, not just classrooms. My kids’ teachers are not about to replaced by robots spewing videos and homework assignments.

And what is the teacher there to do?Yes, they’re there to deliver the course material, but what else?

The easy answer is that they’re there to give feedback on the students’ work. And, OK, that’s important. But the thought which has been most enlightening for us is this one:

What if the teacher is largely there to give feedback on the feedback?

In a peer-to-peer course, people will be offering advice to one another, but the quality of that advice is vastly important. Compare these two comments:

GENERIC: “I loved your piece because I thought it was very atmospheric, but I didn’t really get the feel that your character was really scared.”

SPECIFIC: “Great. There were some lovely words here (mullioned, brocade, umber) which lent a really rich, somewhat creepy atmosphere, but your character’s emotions were indicated entirely through rather cliched bodily responses (her teeth chattered, hairs rising on the back of the neck). I wonder if you could reduce or get rid of those bodily comments and just describe exactly what your character was feeling.”

It’s obvious that the second type of comment is of greater value to the recipient. But it’s also helpful to the giver.

The more you practise the effective (detailed, specific) analysis of text the more instinctively you’ll bring those skills to your own book.

There’s a comment from James Mitchner which gets a lot of play on the internet: “I’m not a very good writer, but I’m an excellent rewriter.”

That’s helpful, but in truth these skills merge. Writing, editing, rewriting: there comes a point where all those things blur together. You start out by writing a sentence on the page, coming back to it two months later, rewriting it, and so on. As you get more experienced, you edit the sentence as you lay it out on the page – tweaking it multiple times before you hit that full-stop.  And then you find that the edits happen in your head before you even hit the page. Yes, of course, you go on editing afterwards, but it’s the same basic activity.

So, for our courses, we’re going to work to see that people learn feedback-giving skills as well as what looks more obviously like writing-skills. Giving great feedback and writing better – it turns out that’s more or less the same thing.

And yes: courses are a great place to learn that stuff, but you don’t have to take a course. Any time you read a book, or a chapter, or a page, or a line that doesn’t quite hit the mark, just ask yourself why. The right answer will follow the SPECIFIC model above. The GENERIC one is next to useless.

That is it from me. I have a schoolroom to tidy and a cane to polish …

Til soon.

Harry