How to teach: English - Chris Curtis 2019

Sexy sprouts
How to teach writing – Part 1

Unlike speaking, writing is not a natural process. Whereas students pick up spoken language through experience and exposure, writing is a lot more complex and is primarily explicitly taught. It is difficult, time-consuming and, occasionally, quite boring. I was the kid who would rather chat and argue about a book than write about it. Like your average teenage boy, I’d spend ages procrastinating about writing. In fact, I tend to leave writing deadlines to the last minute. That hasn’t changed much to this day.

The problem comes, perhaps, when we try to dress up the process, covering it in tinsel. We say it is fun and easy when, in reality, it is drawn out and blooming difficult. Personally, it took me writing every week on my blog to begin to understand how it really works. It also took me finding some good editors to make me see how to improve. One told me I needed more of an opinion, another highlighted my tendency to repeat things. I am still learning.

I think primary schools do a good job of making writing fun, but the veneer has worn off by secondary school. You are writing to make yourself understood and to present an image of yourself to another person. Some might say that writing is a dying skill, but if you look at the comments on a Facebook page or Twitter, you can see there has never been a greater need to help students, and adults, communicate articulately with the world and think about the message they are presenting to others.

There should be a balance in lessons between highlighting the areas for improvement (spelling, accuracy, grammar, content, structure) and praising what works. Students need to see success and be praised when they achieve it. Through chance, skill or mistake great writing can flow from even the clumsiest pen, but to increase the chances of that happening teachers need to ensure that there are lots of opportunities to write in lessons. We also have to overcome the thought that all writing should be marked, assessed and inputted into a spreadsheet for a school leader to scrutinise. Work should be read, but it doesn’t need a stamp of approval or detailed analysis from the teacher every time. An obsession with the final product can neglect the complex process of writing, which includes thinking, planning, sequencing, researching, reflecting, redrafting and fine tuning. Students need to explore and develop their voice, and that only comes with time and work on the processes involved. I have seen some students panic and worry when writing, because they are more focused on the end than the means. The fear of how the end product will be marked, and viewed, by the teacher has a detrimental impact. Rather than enjoy the process of communicating and exploring ideas, they are entrapped by their ’mind forg’d manacles’.

Our fetishism for marking has warped writing in the classroom. Teachers, if we are honest, will admit that we control the amount of work produced in a lesson so that there is less to mark. The sad thing is that this can cause us an inescapable cycle of underdeveloped work. The more we talk a language, the more fluent and confident we become in it. Equally, the more we write, the more fluent we become. We must address this and challenge how marking is used in the classroom. It shouldn’t get in the way of progress and development. At the moment it can. Intervening during the process, for me, gets better improvements than summative marking. Why? Well, simply, in the middle of the process students are susceptible to change and willing to embrace it. As soon as we hit the end, it takes a highly responsible student to want to redraft and improve work. A discussion during the process can address the flaws of marking. Talking about what a student has done or could do will get better results than asking them to write five sentences after they have completed the work. The time before and during writing are instrumental periods of the process and when teachers should be diving in to help students. Afterwards is about learning from the process and making sure students can recall key parts, but during is when you can model, guide and support them to make changes.

What style of writing should dominate the classroom? Do we really want every student to use a clumsy facsimile of Dickens’ style? Or do we want students to write in the style of Enid Blyton, or even Agatha Christie? Style is often dictated by fashion and so becomes problematic as fashions change. One teacher might particularly enjoy dystopian fiction, so their preferred style would be one of bleak description, buckets of misery and the odd shot of optimism. Another might be a fantasist and promote writing that features trolls, unicorns and mighty swordsmen. English teachers need to be cautious of their own tastes and address the matter of style head-on. Compare Dickens to Rowling. Compare Dahl to Conrad. All are successful writers, but they haven’t followed a formula that says, ’Do this and you will become successful.’ A sparse, subtle writer can be as telling as a detailed, bombastic, repetitive one. This forms a minor paradoxical difficulty for students.

The problem comes as a result of our exam system and how teachers have interpreted marking. Is the exam assessing a student’s proficiency in a skill? Or is it assessing the student’s ability to include a language feature? Skills have been neglected in favour of more easily evidenced content. Students are told that if they include X, Y and Z they will get a top grade. Evidencing content features has warped teaching and marking. If a student includes a feature, then it is evidence, I suppose, that a student can use it. But have they used it skilfully, appropriately, effectively or structurally? Did the student simply plonk a semicolon in because a teacher told them to throw one in like a grenade and hope it does the job? Bloated writing is rewarded by teachers and is not considered successful in academic terms unless it has numerous (clearly visible) markers. No matter what the student is writing, they have to pack it with discernible features associated with the top grade. In fact, exam boards are increasingly requesting that teachers, and students, move away from this approach and stop using content mnemonics such as AFOREST¹ and the like to instead focus on the communication of ideas.²

Simplicity in writing is not encouraged in schools. There are writers whose work is seemingly effortless and beautiful, with very few unwieldy words or obvious techniques, and they are the ones we should be including in lessons. For me, these include Patricia Highsmith, Angela Carter, John Steinbeck, Ray Bradbury, Ian Banks, Stephen King, Saki, George Orwell and Ernest Hemingway.

An idea can be expressed in a single sentence or a whole paragraph.

Example 1:

Marley was dead, to begin with.³

Example 2:

It was the best of times,

it was the worst of times,

it was the age of wisdom,

it was the age of foolishness,

it was the epoch of belief,

it was the epoch of incredulity,

it was the season of Light,

it was the season of Darkness,

it was the spring of hope,

it was the winter of despair,

we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way—in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.⁴

The examples prove that there is more than one way to set the tone and scene. Where one is blunt and direct, the other is grandiose and poignant. They have similar functions but achieve them in different ways. A simple sentence can be just as powerful as a long multi-clause sentence or detailed paragraph. The key is knowing when it is best to use which option and in which context. Both are styles we should explore to help students write well.

1. Sexy sprouts

Over the years, I’ve spent countless hours teaching the features of different text types and ended up frustrated when information only stuck in the heads of the most able students. Students with an advanced level of understanding were able to recreate texts while others were only able to copy their most basic features. I have read countless newspaper reports which have been a narrative set out in columns with a headline and lovingly and time-consumingly drawn picture. Looks like the real thing; doesn’t read or sound like it.

Writing can appear close to wizardry. You are mixing a number of ingredients to make a powerful spell. It was when I was working on some persuasive writing with Year 8 that I developed what has been, for me, a monumental piece of understanding. We were watching the infamous Marks and Spencer adverts where glossy footage of food is narrated by the soft, slowly spoken, sultry voice of a woman. It made food sound sexy. We attempted to give sprouts that treatment.

Soft, silky leaves peel back to show a crunchy, hard centre. Ready for picking.

The great thing was that it made students use all of the techniques I had previously spent months teaching them … naturally and automatically. Putting the emphasis on effect instead of text type made the writing instantly better. Instead of asking students to write ’dot-to-dot’ pieces, I was asking them to make real texts with the emphasis on the impact. In truth, I was getting students to act as real writers. Real writers don’t follow a set list of ingredients. They try their damnedest to communicate a thought or a feeling. I gave classes the following piece of text and asked them to rewrite it for a different effect, ranging from guilt to boredom to awe.

Pure evil. The worst vegetable in the world. A soggy, watery parcel of smelly green goo. It is as if the worst of every meal has been scooped together and boiled down into one small ball. Eating them is like eating sick that has been left out overnight and has little bits of peas floating around in it.

The discussion moved away from identifying simplistic devices. Now students were thinking, and that is the key word, about how to achieve the desired impact. They were asking the right questions instead of questioning what they needed to include. They weren’t looking at writing as a shopping list.

Thanks to several students and classes for producing the following examples:

Making the reader feel impressed and awed.

Brussel sprouts handpicked by Scottish farmers. All washed in fresh, crystal clear bottled water. All the way from the waterfalls in the Scottish Isles. Feel the sensation as you bite slowly into the crispy, crunchy leaves of this round succulent wonder of the earth. These sprouts will light up any occasion. Be sure to indulge yourself on these green parcels of delight and joy.

Making the reader feel guilty.

How would you feel if you were walked past in the supermarket every day, with no one even thinking about buying you? Well, this is how Barbara and her family feel. They grew up dreaming of the open air, but when they finally got there, they were ripped and torn from their homes and were shoved in a tight, uncomfortable plastic box and stacked on shelves where nobody looks. Forgotten and unloved, Barbara waits.

Making the reader feel shocked and horrified.

At six months old, they are ripped from the safety of their family and thrown into boiling water. Their skin melts and their leaves burn away from their body. Slowly, they suffer in pain as they die in the skin-blistering water. It takes two minutes for a sprout to die in boiling water. If they are lucky, they are chopped or mashed beforehand. The majority are not so lucky and they face this agonising death.

Making the reader feel a sense of urgency and need.

Now these sprouts are limited edition. One of a kind. They come in several shades of green. Select the best one for your meal. A light green for a light, healthy meal and a dark shade of green for a decadent, rich meal. They are so versatile. From cooking to eating, there’s so much you can do with these limited edition sprouts, which have been genetically engineered to be even tastier than the average sprout. But stocks are limited, so if you want to experience something new, experience something different, experience something original, then pick up a bag now. Only £5 for a bag, buy this special treat for a loved one, a friend, or even to treat yourself.

This had a knock-on impact on their creative writing. It highlights one of the problems students have: often they are limited by the ’effect’ of their creative writing. How many times have I read something intended to scare me? Students tend to have two default modes: to scare or to use humour. Open them up to other effects and feelings and you’ll get more interesting and, more importantly, meaningful writing. To aid their realisation, I tend to place huge emphasis on the emotional journey: write me a story that covers these three emotions — fear, disgust, pride.