True empowerment is not simply making choices, but being equipped to make well-informed decisions through examination of the language's sound system and grammar. RGC workshops help community members see the big picture of how their language works, enabling them to have all relevant patterns in mind when making decisions. This helps them avoid the pitfall of potentially making inconsistent and conflicting choices when considering one word or construction in isolation. 

For example, in an RGC workshop on Bongo, the community representatives first chose to connect the subject pronoun bi to the verb as in bilehi je 'he.worshiped us.’ Later, as they worked through other constructions in their language, they discovered that the conjunction di ‘when’ can separate this pronoun from the verb, as in bi di lehi je ‘when he worshiped us.' With growing awareness of this and other similar constructions,* they decided it was better to separate the subject as in bi lehi je ‘he worshiped us.’ 

*Such as bilehi je ‘our worship’ (bi- action verbal noun) and ꞌbilehi ‘worshiper’ (ꞌbi- person verbal noun)

Another essential aspect of true community ownership is the availability of community members who consistently use the agreed-upon writing system when producing written materials. For this reason, RGC guides worskhop participants through the process of constructing grammar books which are written in a way that speakers of the language can understand. This gives communities the opportunity to be more informed about decisions concerning their writing system and provides a greater chance of sustainability for language development.

RGC workshops typically covers about 80% of the phonology, morphology, syntax and discourse analysis* in just 4-6 weeks. While it may take a linguist 4-6 months to write about the grammar learned in these workshops, the time that community representatives need to be away from other responsibilities is relatively short in comparison. From start to finish, the approach takes 8-18 months to complete. 

*80% is a rough estimate. Often, even more than 80% of the language's word forms and constructions are collected, even if the functions are not fully understood. 

With the RGC approach, the following items are able to be completed within 8-18 months: 

• The collection of enough data to begin language development

• The creation of a well-informed writing system as workshop participants study the language's sound patterns & constructions

• The testing of these orthography decisions for writability by producing written materials 

• The testing of the new writing system for readability and acceptance within the community 

In 2010, representatives of the Beli [blm] language community of South Sudan finished translating the gospel of Luke at the request of Beli churches. Besides a brief spelling guide, this was the first published book in the language. There was little linguistic analysis done of Beli and the tentative orthography was untested. It is no surprise, therefore, that the community found it difficult to read. 

Tim Stirtz then became involved with linguistic analysis in hopes of determining the source of the reading difficulty. Using the RGC approach, Stirtz and local representatives compared the sounds of hundreds of words and examined numerous grammatical constructions in several non-translated narrative texts. They learned that nearly one in five words were in a minimal pair for either lexical or grammatical tone, without being represented in writing. Their assumption was that the high functional load for tone was likely the main cause of the reading difficulty. 

By the end of the workshop, the participants had chosen four writing rules that distinguished 75% of these ambiguities. Next, they took a narrative text written according to these rules and tested it with the community. Although the writing rules were the simplest way to make reading possible, Stirtz suspected that the Beli would not easily learn them without additional training. He therefore wrote a grammar book to describe the language patterns and constructions that informed these writing choices. After several months of practice applying the agreed-upon choices to written materials (over a period of years), the Beli writers for the translation project are now using these orthographic conventions with practically no errors, and they report that those in literacy classes and many in churches are reading with understanding.