Giving us a choice in reading assessments and stopping our fixation with essay writing and essay preparation

When the new English GCSEs were introduced, the exam boards were selling their courses on the basis of KS3 materials. These KS3 materials were simply watered down GCSE papers. The longer I teach the GCSEs, the more I see that watered down GCSE questions is not the way to do things best. I have enough of marking exam papers and adding Years 7, 8 and 9 into the mix means that I am just a walking and talking exam marking machine – with teeth and hair. The GCSEs are the end point, but they are not the starting and middle point too. Years of answering the structure question will not make students better at answering them. It will make them understand the format well, but not necessarily the knowledge and skills to answer it effectively.

Last year, we tried to strategies to address reading and the assessing of reading. I wanted to explore how we could assess reading without defaulting to GCSE questions. A large problem with teaching and assessing reading is that it is all largely based on written literary analysis. Students are taught to write a literary response to a text from Year 7. How does the writer use language to make the monster sound scary in the extract? Students have to make a point and then explain it in detail. This is repeated again and again. And, we judge a student’s reading based on this. We see if they understand the text and we see if they can explain how the writer used language. All too often, these paragraphs are a retention of knowledge and the clever bits the teacher told them in class. If we honest, there is a level of narcissism when marking these essay style bits of writing, because we like it if the student remembers something we said or told them. Let’s give them a higher mark.

The added problem to this literary analysis is how we prepare students for writing a response. Students are often so heavily supported to write the essay so that sometimes the assessment amounts to filling in the gaps assessment. The problem I have is separating the student’s understanding from the teacher’s support. Rather than seeing what the student can and can’t do, we see what they can recall. If we are honest, how useful to our teaching is student’s response to an essay title that we have been preparing them for from the start of the unit? Essay based assessments do help us to spot issues with the use of quotations, idea forming and explanations, but do they effectively helps us to understand how students read independently and respond to a text?  

Therefore, we’ve changed our approach to some reading assessments to help us get a better picture. At the start of KS3 and KS4, we complete a reading age test to identify their reading skills. Last year, we started changing the assessment of reading skill as we approach literary texts. We started using multiple choice questioning. Here’s an example of one we used with our Year 7s this year.

Heroes and Villains Assessment 2018 – Dracula

Just as I had come to this conclusion I heard a heavy step approaching behind the great door, and saw through the chinks the gleam of a coming light. Then there was the sound of rattling chains and the clanking of massive bolts drawn back. A key was turned with the loud grating noise of long disuse, and the great door swung back.

Within stood a tall old man, clean shaven save for a long white moustache, and clad in black from head to foot, without a single speck of colour about him anywhere. He held in his hand an antique silver lamp, in which the flame burned without a chimney or globe of any kind, throwing long quivering shadows as it flickered in the draught of the open door. The old man motioned me in with his right hand with a courtly gesture, saying in excellent English, but with a strange intonation.

"Welcome to my house! Enter freely and of your own free will!" He made no motion of stepping to meet me, but stood like a statue, as though his gesture of welcome had fixed him into stone. The instant, however, that I had stepped over the threshold, he moved impulsively forward, and holding out his hand grasped mine with a strength which made me wince, an effect which was not lessened by the fact that it seemed cold as ice, more like the hand of a dead than a living man. Again he said:

"Welcome to my house! Enter freely. Go safely, and leave something of the happiness you bring!" The strength of the handshake was so much akin to that which I had noticed in the driver, whose face I had not seen, that for a moment I doubted if it were not the same person to whom I was speaking. So to make sure, I said interrogatively, "Count Dracula?"

He bowed in a courtly way as he replied, "I am Dracula, and I bid you welcome, Mr. Harker, to my house. Come in, the night air is chill, and you must need to eat and rest." As he was speaking, he put the lamp on a bracket on the wall, and stepping out, took my luggage. He had carried it in before I could forestall him. I protested, but he insisted.

"Nay, sir, you are my guest. It is late, and my people are not available. Let me see to your comfort myself." He insisted on carrying my traps along the passage, and then up a great winding stair, and along another great passage, on whose stone floor our steps rang heavily. At the end of this he threw open a heavy door, and I rejoiced to see within a well-lit room in which a table was spread for supper, and on whose mighty hearth a great fire of logs, freshly replenished, flamed and flared.

The Count halted, putting down my bags, closed the door, and crossing the room, opened another door, which led into a small octagonal room lit by a single lamp, and seemingly without a window of any sort. Passing through this, he opened another door, and motioned me to enter. It was a welcome sight. For here was a great bedroom well lighted and warmed with another log fire, also added to but lately, for the top logs were fresh, which sent a hollow roar up the wide chimney. The Count himself left my luggage inside and withdrew, saying, before he closed the door.

"You will need, after your journey, to refresh yourself by making your toilet. I trust you will find all you wish. When you are ready, come into the other room, where you will find your supper prepared."

The light and warmth and the Count's courteous welcome seemed to have dissipated all my doubts and fears. Having then reached my normal state, I discovered that I was half famished with hunger. So making a hasty toilet, I went into the other room.

I found supper already laid out. My host, who stood on one side of the great fireplace, leaning against the stonework, made a graceful wave of his hand to the table, and said,

"I pray you, be seated and sup how you please. You will I trust, excuse me that I do not join you, but I have dined already, and I do not sup."

Extract from Bram Stoker’s ‘Dracula’  

1.        Whose perspective is the story told from?

ð         A: Count Dracula

ð         B: Mr Harker  

ð         C: The Driver 

ð         D: A Servant

2.        What is the narrator’s attitude towards Count Dracula?

ð         A: Scared 

ð         B: Curious   

ð         C: Nervous   

ð         D: Excited  

3.        By the end of the extract, the narrator is…

ð         A: Relaxed and calm

ð         B: Worried and scared  

ð         C: A bit nervous

ð         D: Angry and fed-up 

4.        What group of words best describes Count Dracula in this extract?

ð         A: worried, anxious, scared

ð         B: rude, abrupt, demanding 

ð         C: mysterious, cautious, distant

ð         D: friendly, welcoming, helpful

5.        Why do you think Count Dracula speaks so kindly to the narrator?  

ð         A: To fool him into thinking he is safe

ð         B: To hypnotise him

ð         C: To show how evil he is

ð         D: To show how he is better than the narrator

6.        How does the writer create the atmosphere in the opening paragraph?

ð         A: Sound effects

ð         B: Light effects 

ð         C: A list

ð         D: A metaphor 

7.        To make Count Dracula seem like a villain the writer has mainly used… 

ð         A: Physical description

ð         B: Dialogue 

ð         C: Exaggeration 

ð         D: Sound effects 

8.        ‘…his hand grasped mine with a strength which made me wince… it seemed cold as ice, more like the hand of a dead than a living man.’ 

What technique is used here?

ð         A: Metaphor

ð         B: Simile

ð         C: Personification

ð         D: Exaggeration 

9.        To make Count Dracula seem less like a villain, the writer has made the character…

ð         A: attractive  

ð         B: tell a joke 

ð         C: Kind and old 

ð         D: look weak

10.     In paragraph 6, the writer repeats the word ‘great’ to …

ð         A: show the size of the place

ð         B: show us there’s lots of holes in the room

ð         C: show us how dark the place is 

ð         D: show us how small things are

11.     Why does Count Dracula use lots of exclamations?

ð         A: To show he is in shock

ð         B: To show that he is shouting

ð         C: To show how pleased he is

ð         D: To show how he thinks the narrator doesn’t understand him

12.     Which two things are the biggest causes of tension in the extract?

ð         A: Vampires and a castle

ð         B: Darkness and only two characters

ð         C: Lots of silence and strange noises 

ð         D: Dracula wants to kill him / monster lurking 

13.     Who in this scene has the most power?

ð         A: Neither characters 

ð         B: Both

ð         C: Narrator

ð         D: Count Dracula

14.     There are lots of references to light in this extract. The light is a symbol. What is it a symbol of?

ð         A: Safety 

ð         B: God 

ð         C: Healing 

ð         D: Ghosts

15.     The writer works hard to convince us that Dracula is a person to be liked and respected. How does the writer do that?

ð         A: Makes him a ‘Count’

ð         B: Makes him come from another country  

ð         C: Makes him intelligent 

ð         D: Makes him tall

16.     ‘At the end of this he threw open a heavy door, and I rejoiced’

What does this suggest to us?

ð         A: He is angry with the narrator

ð         B: He is quite weak   

ð        C: He isn’t careful with his property

ð         D: He has incredible strength

17.   ‘The old man motioned me in with his right hand with a courtly gesture, saying in excellent English, but with a strange intonation.
What does the bit in bold suggest to us?

ð         A: He has a strange voice

ð         B: He speaks very quietly   

ð         C: He puts the emphasis on the wrong sounds in words  

ð         D: The narrator cannot hear him properly 

18.     Dracula is an example of the Gothic horror genre. What two features of the genre are evident here?   Pick two things.

ð         A: A woman being terrorised 

ð         B: A dark place  

ð         C: A human with strange powers 

ð         D: A dungeon

19.     What does the word ‘dissipated mean in the following line?

‘The light and warmth and the Count's courteous welcome seemed to have dissipated all my doubts and fears.’

ð         A: Improved

ð         B: Increase   

ð         C: Reduce  

ð         D: Change  

   

20. You are going to complete this section in your green assessment books.  Write a page in response to this question.

Bram Stoker doesn’t present Count Dracula as a typical villain. Explain why you think the writer presented him in the way he did.

In your response, you need to:

·         Use quotations from the extract to prove your points.

·         Pick out words or techniques used by the writer.

·         Explain what the writer is suggesting to the reader.

·         Explain what the reader feels. 

Our idea was to separate reading assessments into two parts. The students prior to this had not read the extract. Instead they had read several extracts from Dickens’s novels related to villains.

Part 1 focuses on understanding and what a student has and hasn’t picked up when reading the text. It uses a range of questions exploring inferences, techniques, perspective, word meanings and genre. From that, we can spot key bits that students haven’t got. But, interestingly, there are questions that relate to the GCSE exam without me being all showy.

For example:

Q1 – structure: Paper 1 Question 3

The student is identifying the perspective of the extract.

Q4 – summary: Paper 2 Question 2

The student is summarising the character.

Across the multiple choice part I can diagnose issues with a student. They can do X,Y and Z. However, they can’t do A, B and C, which is a far better diagnostic tool for reading skills. It isn’t perfect and I will admit it, but it is a starting point.

Part 2 is ‘ye olde essay writing’ but we have reduced it to a page and just a page. If a student can’t say it in a page, then they’ll never say it in fifteen. It’s here where we do a combination of GCSE questions – Q4 and Q2. They have a question in which they have to explain a point. The first part will hopefully support them with their ideas and help them to write a meaningful paragraph or two.

Oh, and this has reduced our marking considerably. Instead of us having four pages of essay for each student to mark, we now have students mark the multiple choice questions and we mark one single page. Before we’d read four pages to give a grade and then say ‘you need to use quotations’ which was ineffective as they’d forget to use quotations next time. Now, we can diagnose issues with reading, perspective for example, and explore how they write about texts quickly and effectively. It has also meant that we are not spending ages writing the one essay. We are working hard on preparation with more texts and not the same one text. It’s allowed for us to be more exploratory with texts. We have tried it with Shakespeare and Dickens novels. They are given an extract they haven’t studied in the multiple choice section and then the page essay is simply relating the text.

From a curriculum leader’s perspective, we are generating two marks and we report back on them. One for reading and one for writing about reading. It allows us to separate parts of reading. The student’s reading and the student’s ability to communicate their ideas about reading. There’s a lot of students who struggle to communicate their ideas about reading, but actually understand the texts. This way we are able to reward students for a bit that has been largely hidden by writing.

I admit there are elements to work on and we are still working on how to word the questions effectively, but for us it has been a significant change. Oh, and we haven’t ditched essays completely. We just use other forms to assess reading rather than rely on essays all the time.

Thanks for reading,

Xris  

That essay is missing something.... a metaphor?!?

I am in that phase of getting students to develop their essay writings skills in preparation for the mock exams. It is a fraught and arduous task sometimes, but, occasionally, you get students who make you see things in a different light. Now, don’t get me wrong, I am not one of those teachers who Instagram every insightful thing a student a student writes independent of what the teacher taught them in the classroom. However, a student wrote a line and it got me thinking. Thinking about how we get students to write academically. And better.  

So, what was this nugget of gold? Simply it was this line:

The Inspector attacks the foundations of the Birling family.

Honestly, it isn’t going to win awards for insight, but what it does is develop understanding. On a simple level, the Inspector does attack the Birling family. However, the use of ‘foundations’ makes us see that the Inspector is attacking the principles and values that are hidden inside / beneath the family. The principles they have grown up with. The principles that were passed on to them by the rest of the family. The principles they grew up with, like every other family in society. ‘Attack the foundations’ becomes a nice metaphor to describe the actual purpose of the Inspector. He doesn’t want to openly attack the people. He wants, instead, to attack what has made them the people they are. The foundations.

Although the metaphor is probably a bit predictable, it made me think that maybe it would help students if we got them to develop interpretations through metaphors. Is there space for metaphors in academic essays? I think we can agree there’s no room for similes or personification at the moment. But, metaphors could be a way to extend the use of interpretations and, especially, developed interpretations. We want creativity and originality with interpretations, but that’s hard without some level of shortcut to abstract thinking. We might do this by using shortcuts like vocabulary, but surely metaphors are an instant way to get students to think abstractly. All too often vocabulary leads us down the path of dictionary corner. Yes, a student has learnt what the word ‘socialism’, but do they understand its relevance to the play, society and context for using it.

Let’s take the original metaphor and rework it for a lesson. What happens if we explore the choice of verbs?

The Inspector destroys the foundations of the Birling family.

The Inspector attacks the foundations of the Birling family. 

The Inspector picks away at the foundations of the Birling family.

The Inspector blows up the foundations of the Birling family. 

‘Destroys’ and ‘blows up’ suggests a sense of maliciousness and evil intent which against Priestley’s purpose behind the play. ‘Picks away’ suggests things are slow and slight. ‘Attacks’ is certainly less aggressive and it is possibly neutral. A better word might even be ‘challenges’. However, ‘attacks’ is probably better because Priestley wants to reduce the foundations of the Birling so they are level with the Smiths, or Joneses

A colleague picked up a great little starter from a school. A teacher shows a slide of objects and students have to explain how the object is a metaphor for an aspect for a part of the text. It is a great idea, but not helpful when getting student to use metaphors. Sheila is a paperclip; she keeps things together but she can easily change shape. Eric is a vase; he holds a lots of liquid and every so often something splashes out. Mr Birling is a clock; he follows the same routine and is focused on one thing only. I could go on. If a student writes one of these in an essay, they’d be intellectually jarring. From this quote we can see that Mrs Birling is cherry on a tree. Therefore, it would probably help to talk about the suitability of metaphors to use. Metaphors relating to buildings tend to work. Household objects and things in the kitchen rarely work. Or, provide a few to start with.

Eric is a ticking time bomb.

The Inspector is a cat amongst the pigeons.

Sheila is a lighthouse in the storm.

Sheila is the crack in the wall.

I am toying to see what students make of the following ones:

Smashing through the glass ceiling

A bomb waiting to explode

A mirror

A painting

A lighthouse

A steam train

A wrecking ball

A torch

A magnifying glass

A microscope

The great thing about using a metaphor in non-fiction is you automatically feel the need to explain the metaphor after its use. All too often, I have seen students with great ideas in essays, but their lack of description hinders their ideas. A metaphor creates an interpretation and then, because the student feels uncomfortable with the extract, they explain what they mean. In a way, we combat this assumption students have that we know what they are talking about.    

Sheila is the crack in the wall because she sees the potential of treating people fairly. She sees what is on the other side. The rest of the characters are fixed and immovable. However, she can see beyond this fixed attitude. A crack getting bigger over time will cause a wall to fall down. Sheila is the start of this wall falling down. The events of the play shows the crack forming and starting and possibly later, after the play, the cracks will get bigger.

The great thing about this use of metaphor is that you have to develop and extend the metaphor in the explanation. A student will have to talk about the crack, the bricks, the other side of the wall and the change in the crack to make themselves clear. In fact, the metaphor crosses the whole play and relates to the structure. At the start Sheila is part of the wall. Then, she becomes a crack. By the end of the play, she is an even bigger crack. A crack not quite big enough to break the wall, but in time with a bit of help she might get better. Add a few quotes and we are having a reasoned and developed interpretation.   

What are the pitfalls of teaching students to use metaphors in essays?

Overuse – they could use them all the time and it distract the thinking.

The metaphors are not suitable or appropriate – jarring for the reader (Eric is a bike without the stabilisers).

They use them as a shorthand for explanations and don’t explain their meaning.

They see it as an excuse to be silly.

Ideas are the bread and butter of an essay. Without ideas, we are stuck. I think using metaphors is an approach to develop thinking and extend explanations.  All this will be a lesson I share with my Year 11 class next week. I will probably follow it up with using personification and similes in essays:

Sheila is like a crying jelly trifle.

Thanks for reading,

Xris

Essays Part 3: Making students think

The question that I often asking myself when marking is: ‘Why don’t they think for themselves?’ Thinking, or more precisely, original thought is gold dust in lessons; yet, it often rarely seen. That’s not without me trying. Try as I might, they rarely seem to step-up to the next level. At the recent TLT, someone asked me: ‘How do I get students to think for themselves?’ Again, I go back to A* essays I have marked and go all misty eyed. If only I could bottle what they do. Bottle it! I’d inject it daily. Or, inject them as my starter. Bring back daily milk too. I’d put it in that.

I often say to students that English is thinking. They look at me slightly bemused and a bit agog. Some get it. Some don’t. The problem we have with English is labels. The subject’s name, English, means students label the subject as reading stuff and writing long stuff. Rarely do they see reading as exploring how other writers think. Rarely do they see writing as showing what they think. English, for me, is the communication of thinking – I know, it doesn’t have a ring to it. But, the lesson is about thinking. What I think? What they think? What others think? What a Victorian lady thinks? What a repressed Edwardian man thinks? What their partners think?

Why don’t student see it as thinking? Could it be our insistence on analysis all the time? Could it be our insistence on labelling things? Could it be the pace at which we teach? Look at the English AQA GCSE paper, there is only one question that addresses thinking. What is the writer’s attitude to blank? The rest of the reading questions focus on spotting and picking apart things. It does focus, in part, on some thinking – what the reader thinks – but its starting point is always techniques. The exam paper isn’t really focused on thinking. It is about spotting language points and then talking about the reader’s feelings. Things have a knock on effect. The percentage time in lessons spent on thinking is reduced due to the insistence of students looking at techniques.

But thinking is hard to teach, isn’t it? I mean it is easy to teach a technique. They learn its definition. They comment on its use. They spot more examples. They have a go at creating their own example. In the terms of progress, it is great, because an outsider can see that a student has learnt said technique. Well, they didn’t know that at the start of the lesson. Brilliant, they do know it now. In fact, they know it so well they can even use it themselves. Outstanding progress.

Now, apply that to thinking. Observing lessons for thinking is a totally different ball game. The fruits of a lesson cannot be seen at the end of a lesson. They might not be seen in the next lesson, or the week after. Sometime, it might not show itself until one time it pounces out and shocks you. That’s why I struggle with non-specialists observing lessons. I admitted to a friend if I observed one of his lessons I wouldn’t know if it was outstanding or not. I wouldn’t, because I don’t know that subject. There might be some markers like students listen attentively and do the stuff they are told, but I wouldn’t really know whether it was outstanding or not because I am not an expert in how students think in that subject. Just as much as he wouldn’t be able to do the same with me.

An essay is a symbol of a student’s thinking. It shows the depth of their understanding and application of an idea.  The problem is knowledge and writing style get in the way of a good essay. A student’s insistent on copying everything off Google makes an essay focus on telling rather than explaining. A student’s insistence of impressive vocabulary, connectives and techniques clouds a clear point. Essays have been morphed into something else. They have moved away from being about detailed thought and moved to being these strange chameleons. Gaudy pieces of writing that repeat obvious and benign things.

How did I learn to write an essay? I think A-level English taught me how to write an essay. My teacher would give a weekly or fortnightly essay to complete. The teacher would give it back marked and I would then do the same thing again with a different essay title. I cut my teeth on writing essays with repeated exposure of essay writing, not explicit structures or approaches. I don’t even think my teachers referred to plans, example essays, connectives or any other gubbins.  Just write one essay after another. They were appalling at the start, but after a time I improved. I learnt how to form and develop an argument over time. My wife joked that she hated English and that she only did well with her essays because she learnt a formula and stuck to it.

Here’s the crux for me: Does drafting the same essay make us better writers of essays? I can understand drafting pieces of writing when the impact is important. Let’s make this horror story even more atmospheric. But, when has an essay ever been written for impact? It hasn’t. It is about clarity of thoughts and ideas and not about impressing the reader and ‘making them want to read on’. Drafting as a process is important, but is it misguided with essay writing? Essay are about writing down thoughts into a logical argument. Drafting often involves changing, adding or removing things. Yes, it can be used to clarify things, but students don’t see it as that. Drafting is about making things better, not about clarity.

Recently I have tried my ‘A-level days approach’ with a GCSE class. Before a big assessment, I, for several weeks, got them to write a two page essay on an aspect relating to the text being studied. I wasn’t drafting their final assessment. I was getting them thinking about unrelated aspects. Each essay focused on a different aspect. Was Shakespeare racist? Does Shakespeare define good and evil clearly in his play? Each subsequent essay showed progress. They got better. In fact, they were much better than the old way of drafting GCSE coursework, which amounted to copying things up and fixing the spelling mistakes. Now, I have always done this thing with A-level teaching, but never with GCSE. I have always printed off a sheet of common problems and great ideas to share with students. Has my obsession with the end product (coursework) at GCSE lead to me not using this approach? I think: yes.

Could also the problem be two-fold? How we teach essay writing. And, how we teach thinking in a lesson. A lot of teaching in English is towards the end product. Tasks are leading students along the merry path to writing a decent essay at the end. Along the path they pick up some ideas from the teacher. They also pick up some ideas from their friends. In effect, the student hasn’t had to do too much thinking, as I have merrily led them to some ‘answers’ without them having to apply their own thinking. Their writing is just a filtering of good ideas and great ideas. They cherry pick their ideas. We are teaching students to plagiarise ideas. We like to think this is them thinking, but it isn’t. Some will think. Some don’t.  You could say without others they would struggle to write anything. True. But, without them attempting to think, they will never think for themselves.  I mentioned in a lesson how some critic suggested Don John in ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ sounds like the word ‘dungeon’. I know almost every student will try to crowbar that point in because it sounds good to them.  

Essay writing can be a tool for a teacher to see how a student thinks independently. Without the teachers input. Without their best mates input. A blind essay, an essay the teacher hasn’t prepared students for, could help us to understand their thinking more. Without putting chances for students to independent thinking in lessons, we will not create independent thinkers.  Maybe, our insistence on verbal discussion of ideas has neglected the emphasis on an individual’s thoughts. Good things can come from group discussions, but surely students must come up with their own ideas first.

We have so much discussion about skills and knowledge over the last few years that it is easy to see how thinking has slipped through the cracks. It is a fine balance we tread every lesson between skill, knowledge and thinking. Perhaps, we need to build more independent ‘thinking time’ to lesson. Not a daft starter, but real time dedicated to problem solving without getting your mate to do it and copy off them.  Possibly put more problems in a lesson for them to solve rather than a glut of differentiated resources to alleviate the difficulty of a task.    

Why don’t they think for themselves? Maybe I am part of the problem rather than the solution.  My fear of them doing badly has meant that I have protected them from failing. I have structured the writing too much for them. I have given them ideas through discussions. I have offered some ideas to them. I have done everything, all designed to help them, and then I am expecting them to think for themselves.

If I want them to think, I need to be prepared to let them think in lessons.

 

Thanks

Xris

Solving the essay problem - Part 1

I have just returned from Southampton and the fabulous Teaching and Learning Takeover, or #TLT14, as we know it in the Twitter world. And, what an event it has been. Full to the brim of great people and great ideas. The hardest thing for everyone was deciding who to visit. Like a teacher’s version of ‘Sophie’s Choice’ (and mild in comparison to the real thing), I had to pick one teacher over another. Do I see X? Or, do I see Y? In fact, I wanted to see X, Y and Z.  Still this morning I feel bad, as I missed out seeing people. Nonetheless, it was fun.

Anyway, my talk was on essay writing. I had the perfect combination of the last session and essay writing. Nothing like leaving the dynamite stuff to the end.

Essay writing is a complex thing and I don’t think any school has all the answers, but I think there are a lot of problems. Simply: how we write. From birth, we are constantly telling students to add things to their writing. Add a full stop. Add a comma. Add an adjective. Add a wow word. Add a connective. By the time students reach us in Year 7, the pattern happens again. Add this. Add that. So much that writing becomes this overloaded mess. And, it is a mess, if we are honest. We give students lists of things to add to their writing before assessments. We give them level ladders to show what they need to add to get to the next level. We even given them writing mats to help them add some more. The problem we have with writing is that it full of too many things.

Like readymade meals, there is so much added that you can’t be sure what is really in it. Thankfully, we won’t find any horsemeat in our students’ writing.

Academic writing, if I am honest, is simple and concise writing. It deals with big-complex-head-scratchy-headache-inducing stuff in a clear and formal way. Academic writing explains and develops an idea. Look at how we as teachers talk in a lesson. We talk in an academic way. We concisely explain complex ideas and develop ideas and thoughts. We rarely use vague language. We don’t list ideas. We introduce and develop ideas. But, what do our students do? They mention everything they have learnt. They list all their ideas.

What does an essay really do?

An essay will generally do all of these at some point.

•       Explains – reasons

•       Evaluates – gives opinions  

•       Criticises - flaws

•       Clarifies  - rephrases

•       Explores  - how others might see it

•       Analyses – highlights specific things of interest 

•       Links – makes connections to contrasting elements

All can be said to be elements of our lessons. Yet, we try to force all of these skills at once, or we try to enforce a structure on to the essay writing process. We try to get students to PEE (Point Evidence Explanation). But real essays don’t follow that pattern. I checked my essays from university. They didn’t. They were a patchwork of PEE. In fact the essays had all three at sporadic moments in the essay. Sometimes, I started with evidence. Sometimes, I used evidence in the middle of something. Sometimes, I finished with evidence. Relate this to the use of evidence in a court of law. When is the best time to reveal a key bit of evidence? When it is appropriate. Or, when it will get the best impact.

Most exam boards moan about the PEE structure and they are right to. Explaining an idea in detail doesn’t take a clear form, as the idea is abstract, transient and vague. Like capturing stars, there is no known way to do it. We try to put it down on paper. To assume, a simple structure will unlock a genius or academic writing is undermining education.

Because the focus is following rigid structures of development, students stumble. They list things. And, rather than develop an idea in a more intelligent way, they add more stuff. So we go back to the additives approach again. Add some connectives.

I have read quite a few essays recently and a striking thing I have noticed: how simple some of the writing is. Not just simple. Really simple. Going to essays dating to the 1950s and earlier, I am surprised at how simple the writing in comparison to what I have got into my head ‘academic writing’ should look like. There is a collective picture of what academic writing is.

Just look at these openings to some of the sentences I found:

We must not neglect…

We are familiar with ….

This blending of….

There are striking uses of …

So prevalent is the notion that…

In one sense…

It is even conceivable …

In the view of ….

The factor above all else…

One of the real problems…

The more perceptive of…

It reminds one of …

This blending of  …

This is certainly not…

But in the case of …

It may be possible to suggest …

 

I read through books of essays and the writing often features words like ‘it’, ‘this’ and ‘the’ at the start of a sentence. The subjects of sentences are often very simple too. The idea behind the sentence is the complex aspect, not the sentence.

In fact, reading the essays I discovered how rarely academics used connectives or discourse markers. In one essay, I witnessed only two examples. Only two. Yet, we insist that students use them with aplomb. We tend to think that students need connectives to develop an idea. Rubbish. The ideas need developing. The use of connectives forces students to list ideas. Moreover. Furthermore. Additionally. They do not develop the original idea. Like icing on a cake, it looks good, but the cake still tastes of poo and has a soggy bottom.  

We need to help students to develop their ideas without the need of connectives. We need to look at the drawing board of how we get students to develop their ideas. We need to get our students thinking more. Just adding things will not make the think better. It just gets them to overload things.

We all want students to be better, but are we limiting the thinking through the teaching and how we teach things? The longer I teach, the more I realise how teaching some simple things can have a greater impact than far more complex things.

Let’s teach students to use a discourse marker once only in an essay. Yes, they help create cohesion and they signal the direction of the argument, but they don’t hold an essay together. The ideas and the development of ideas are what makes an essay hold together.

I will carry on more of the discussion in my next blog.

Thanks for reading and a big thanks to Jenn and David for organising the whole event.

Xris