The English Miscellany

That's my last sentence on this topic. Ever. In your view, what are the TOP TEN problems that students experience in their writing? Obviously, it depends quite a lot on the age group, their experience, and whether English is their first language. In this blog I'm thinking about weaker students, aged 11+. It is clear, however, that many of the problems also affect the work of undergraduates and adult business people. And we're constantly striving to improve our writing, as earlier versions of this informal post would undoubtedly demonstrate. In my experience, many common writing problems are persistent and recurrent. Is a quick fix really that difficult? Do you make of a checklist for your students? How do you empower your students to take more professional care and control of their work? Any ideas? Here is my draft list: Many sentences that need a verb don't have one. There is a tendency to use phrases, or sentence fragments, rather than senten

The Rep Theatre and the Library of Birmingham This blog briefly shares parts of a recent exercise with students. The first aim was to undertake reading and writing exercises in order to gain a better understanding of techniques of persuasion . The second aim was to turn the exercise upside down by writing a highly critical review , or a letter of complaint . We also deployed speaking exercises in the form of  radio-style interviews, a phone-in, and social media interactive engagement such as short text and tweet responses. The underlying aims were vocabulary building and confident use of language. Our first task was to study the vocabulary used in advertisements and marketing/advertising material. These were drawn from a Children's Guide to Leisure Activities in the Black Country (West Midlands, UK);  Rewriting the Book - Discovery Season - Library of Birmingham; and What's On at the beacon Arts centre, Greenock, Scotland. Initially students were asked to s

You have probably come across the SMARTER model as a way of organising a project.  It works like this S          Specific              Significant, Stretching, Simple M         Measurable              Meaningful, Motivational, Manageable A         Attainable Appropriate, Achievable, Agreed, Assignable, Actionable, Ambitious, Aligned, Aspirational, Acceptable, Action-focused R          Relevant           Result-Based, Results-oriented, Resourced, Resonant, Realistic T          Timely Time-oriented, -framed, -based, -bound, -Specific, -tabled, -limited, Trackable, Tangible E          Evaluate, Ethical, Excitable, Enjoyable, Engaging, Ecological R          Reevaluate, Rewarded, Reassess, Revisit, Recordable, Rewarding In order to apply these practical strategies to your revision work for exams, I would also recommend: Short blocks of time for work A balanced workload between all subjects means variety  Days off work for leisure Writi

In recent years we have moved a long way from teacher-led Practical Criticism Q&A. As learners we are always searching for fun ways to explore texts. Experience demonstrates that allowing children to be creative is an excellent way to build critical engagement. Fun means deeper learning, and in my view, play cultivates questions. So let's have the courage to allow our students to play with plots and create their own interpretations of them. This approach need not displace traditional literary/critical writing exercises. Rather, it serves as a way of incubating enjoyable and engaging point(s) of entry to the text. How does this approach work? I'm not going to write up a detailed lesson plan, but you will find a short case study below. The newspaper model can be adapted to any text. (I recently worked with this approach using Charles Dickens's Great Expectations .) The project briefly sketched below will also help the learners to be more aware of style, tone, a