OK, so as an addition to what I was talking about in the previous post, I've put together some ideas for ways you can get an early start on developing your creative and descriptive writing skills and to start developing your vocabulary. If you haven't got a thesaurus yet, get one! Then have a read of this document on "Descriptive Writing" and complete the exercises.
Feel free to publish some of the things you write for any of the exercises as comments and responses to this post...even if it's only a sentence. It's all about taking small steps and making progress. Writing just one awesome sentence that you're really proud of puts you one step closer to writing an awesome paragraph that you're really proud of.
You don't have to write a best-selling novel straight off the bat. Just prove to yourself, just for your own satisfaction, that you have what it takes to write a really awesome sentence.
Thursday, November 25, 2010
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
In the beginning...
Hey crew,
Lots to be done for English this coming year, starting off with Language Analysis (Using Language to Persuade). This will consist of 3 SACs throughout Term 1, each worth 10 marks, with your best two grades being combined to become your final grade out of 20 for this outcome.
Now, there's a risk of falling into the trap of thinking "Excellent. I get one freebie, so it doesn't matter if I don't do very well on the first one."
There are a number of reasons why this is a bad idea: firstly, if you DO actually do badly on your first one, it puts extra pressure on yourself to make sure the next two are much better, rather than calmly being able to gradually improve, as would be expected. It's going to be a long year. Any steps you can take to avoid stress are positive ones. Putting pressure on yourself in the first SAC of the year is a really bad option. Secondly, rather than seeing it as an opportunity to ease into Year 12 English, you should see it as an opportunity to hit the ground running.
Grab yourself a thesaurus, start developing your vocabulary and practicing your ability to express yourself creatively, poetically and intelligently. Just because it's an essay, doesn't mean that you shouldn't still be creative and imaginative in the way in which you express yourself.
So rather than a freebie, try something different. Be creative, be daring, try and start off the year with a really sound building block to base the rest of the year on. If you can already start working and developing your skills at this early stage, you'll really be setting yourself up to be in a strong position to excel for the rest of the year.
So, what to do?
The best things you can do early on to get yourself in a strong position are:
1. buy yourself a thesaurus and start finding more interesting ways of expressing yourself. Develop your vocabulary.
2. Focus on the basics. Spelling, punctuation, grammar. Students lose marks for this in every SAC and you really shouldn't. All this takes is a little extra effort outside of class on your part.
a) Get a dictionary.
b )If you know you're a bad speller, assume when you write that every word is spelt wrong.
c) Then use your dictionary to check your spelling.
d) Each word you spell wrong, write in a separate list. Write it down the way you spelt it, followed by the correct way.
e) Practice putting these words into sentences, so that the next time you go to use them, you remember your past mistakes and learn from them.
Have a look at this document I wrote with a few basic punctuation rules in it to get you started on that side of things: Punctuation Rules
3. Another thing you can do is start getting ideas about how to look at the media in a critical way. Analysing the motivations and bias that often lie behind what's presented as "reporting"or "journalism". A good program that analyses some of these ideas for you is Media Watch. Check out this episode and pay particular attention to the story about "The Halloween Institute".
Lots to be done for English this coming year, starting off with Language Analysis (Using Language to Persuade). This will consist of 3 SACs throughout Term 1, each worth 10 marks, with your best two grades being combined to become your final grade out of 20 for this outcome.
Now, there's a risk of falling into the trap of thinking "Excellent. I get one freebie, so it doesn't matter if I don't do very well on the first one."
There are a number of reasons why this is a bad idea: firstly, if you DO actually do badly on your first one, it puts extra pressure on yourself to make sure the next two are much better, rather than calmly being able to gradually improve, as would be expected. It's going to be a long year. Any steps you can take to avoid stress are positive ones. Putting pressure on yourself in the first SAC of the year is a really bad option. Secondly, rather than seeing it as an opportunity to ease into Year 12 English, you should see it as an opportunity to hit the ground running.
Grab yourself a thesaurus, start developing your vocabulary and practicing your ability to express yourself creatively, poetically and intelligently. Just because it's an essay, doesn't mean that you shouldn't still be creative and imaginative in the way in which you express yourself.
So rather than a freebie, try something different. Be creative, be daring, try and start off the year with a really sound building block to base the rest of the year on. If you can already start working and developing your skills at this early stage, you'll really be setting yourself up to be in a strong position to excel for the rest of the year.
So, what to do?
The best things you can do early on to get yourself in a strong position are:
1. buy yourself a thesaurus and start finding more interesting ways of expressing yourself. Develop your vocabulary.
2. Focus on the basics. Spelling, punctuation, grammar. Students lose marks for this in every SAC and you really shouldn't. All this takes is a little extra effort outside of class on your part.
a) Get a dictionary.
b )If you know you're a bad speller, assume when you write that every word is spelt wrong.
c) Then use your dictionary to check your spelling.
d) Each word you spell wrong, write in a separate list. Write it down the way you spelt it, followed by the correct way.
e) Practice putting these words into sentences, so that the next time you go to use them, you remember your past mistakes and learn from them.
Have a look at this document I wrote with a few basic punctuation rules in it to get you started on that side of things: Punctuation Rules
3. Another thing you can do is start getting ideas about how to look at the media in a critical way. Analysing the motivations and bias that often lie behind what's presented as "reporting"or "journalism". A good program that analyses some of these ideas for you is Media Watch. Check out this episode and pay particular attention to the story about "The Halloween Institute".
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