The Chinese route to writing is fixed: phonics, then characters, then sentences, then model essays, and only then your own words. A child waits until they have enough characters to deserve to say anything. Dr Zhihao Yan sets that against two classrooms. In Dr Xiaoyun Peng's writing class the starting question is philosophical — who are you, and how do you introduce yourself? — and children who can speak but not yet write take names apart and chain them into a story. In a Year 1 literacy lesson in an English state primary, after The Tiger Who Came to Tea, nobody is asked to write a response: they pick four picture cards and retell the story by ordering them. Migrant children with English as a second language, local children just starting phonics, and a child who will not speak all "wrote". He ends on the difference in marking — a teacher who writes "ran 😊" beside runned and then praises the reasoning.