The English Miscellany

University - anxiety or liberation ? Dear Students, Many of you will find the transition from school to university very difficult. In a previous blog I offered an impressionistic account of some of the main reasons why students don't have a successful first year and provided some practical tips. But what about the initial transition? How will university life be different from being at school and living at home? Below, I offer a five point plan for making a successful transition. The first point to consider is that the intensive care you have probably experienced at home and at school will not be available with the same frequency at your college. Personal tutors and welfare staff will be available to help, but they won't be monitoring your health and well-being on a daily basis. Support services are widely available in all universities, but you will need to seek them out. If you have lived a sheltered life between your school and your bedroom the personal transition t

Time to take the Book Challenge. Please post comments and suggestion below, or use Twitter #bookchallenge Which book is most often stolen from a library? Is it possible to be poisoned by a book? How much did it cost to produce the world's most expensive book? What was Shakespeare's best insult? Who invented science fiction, or fantasy? When was the world's first novel written? What's the funniest moment in literature? Which book has the best opening line? What's the longest book ever written? Who is the world's best selling writer, alive or dead? Who is the most famous/infamous fictional woman to appear in a story? When was the first comic strip published? Who wrote the world's first romance? When was the world's first recipe book composed? Who was the world's most prolific author? Who invented young adult fiction? Which book has caused the most trouble? Who is the most liked/hated superhero?  Who was the world's slowest

Most writers and intrigued by the idea that they might be more productive. Some writers want to become prolific. Some writers, such as Shakespeare, were able to churn out two or more major works every year; others, such as Charles Dickens or Walter Scott, astonish us by the sheer quantity of their work. I was surprised to discover recently that my writing notebook lists plans for 23 books. Clearly some of these projects are little more than a title and an outline. So the problem is not having ideas, it’s more a question of having the time, the discipline and the confidence to see them through to completion as published works. In short, I am now trying to increase my productivity by researching some of the recurring ideas typically adopted by successful writers. While doing some research recently on translations of Aristophanes’ Lysistrata , I cam across the impressive productivity of JackLindsay , who produced 170 creative and non-fiction works during his long career.

As we have noted in earlier blogs on this site, exam stress and anxiety is built into this mode of assessment. That's partly because the exam is typically a two or three hour endurance test in which you are deprived of home comforts and familiar supports. For many students exams present an image of clinical discipline and dehumanisation. Sitting exams may also cause you to revisit similar occasions in the past that involved a traumatic sense of disempowerment, defeat and failure. But despite the huge potential downside of exams presented in these terms they do mimic real life experiences where you may have to work under pressure, use your wits, or demonstrate that you can plan and manage your time. Exams are here to stay! Nonetheless, it will be helpful to recognise that there are some common anxieties that exam candidates experience. They may fear that there isn't a question that they can answer, or they may fear being seized with writer's block as they stare at a b

A quick-reference list of the qualities and actions of a connected learner : Mindful of others’ beliefs and interests Able to step back from conflict and reposition debate Share what you find useful Adopts essential technical and hardware skills for interactivity and participation Updates knowledge of appropriate software and other interfaces Distinguishes between more and less relevant or reliable sources Builds networks Increases valued connections Foster community development Joins and connects in order to make meaning Filters and selects information Asks difficult questions Explores the opportunity to rethink Pushes solutions beyond initial proposal Fosters appreciative inquiry Open to new ideas rather than aloof and disengaged Takes delight in having a responsibility for the direction of your learning

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

Boys are underperforming by 10% or more, compared to girls' literacy. My experience working with boys and adolescents (9-15) in the last year has taught me that they do not have an insurmountable problem with reading or writing. But far too often they are being forced to answer tedious comprehension questions. Or they are pushed into commenting critically on subjects that do not relate at all to their interests. Research shows that often boys visualize reading as a female activity. So some of the problems are part of the current culture and construction of reading as an activity. At first, the key to success, in my view, is to work with their existing interests. That means that you need to find out what fires their imagination. In an overcrowded classroom that is sometimes difficult, and there is a tendency for the whole class to work on the same topics such as "Africa," or "Environment," or "Superheroes." The young people I've worked wi

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