Writers’ groups, in virtual or physical forms, can create communities of practice, which have been shown to offer emotional support to writers during vulnerable times. Noticing that the Covid-19 pandemic exacerbated emotional vulnerability in our undergraduates who were writing 10,000-word reports, we initiated an online writers’ group using the Zoom electronic platform. A focus group held at the closing of the semester revealed that students valued most the feelings of safety nurtured by the group. An examination of the interaction in the sessions, via video recordings, revealed that it was precisely this safety that stimulated critical reflection among participants, which helped them manage their writing processes.

This paper outlines the development of the “Reader Engagement framework”, a tool for helping emerging writers understand what might keep readers reading – or stop readers from reading – a text. The Reader Engagement framework has been under development for the past five years, primarily in the context of undergraduate English proficiency classes at a large university in Flanders. Using the principles of constructivist grounded theory (Charmaz 2014), a preliminary framework was sketched using as data the margin comments of one reader who noted points of engagement or disengagement while reading student texts. Additional rounds of data collection included the engagement perceptions of student-readers, as well as those of teacher-readers from various disciplines. Thus far 1087 readers have been consulted, and the categories in the framework seem to be largely saturated. Though further refinement is necessary, the framework has been found successful as a teaching tool, and as an assessment and feedback tool. It also seems to have potential for offering writers a new way of conceptualising writing.

Feedback: The Communication of Praise, Criticism, and Advice Robbie M. Sutton, Matthew J. Hornsey and Karen M. Douglas (eds.) (2012) New York: Peter Lang International Academic Publishers. Pp. 359 ISBN: 9781433105111