How to improve writing: sample
- 1. How To Improve Student Writing Three essential strategies to turn students into better writers P r e v i e
- 2. Copyright © A Ticking Mind Publication. All rights reserved. 2014. ii P r e v i e
- 3. Improve vocabulary and vocabulary use Vocabulary makes a significant difference to student writing - of that much, everyone is clear. But many vocabulary strategies fo- cus on teaching that ‘what’ of vocabulary (i.e what are good words to use) rather than the ‘how’ (how to use vocabulary ef- fectively in writing). Consider these two sentences: • Max has frustration. • Frustration overwhelms Max. In studying the picture book Where The Wild Things Are, students have been taught the abstract noun ‘frustration’. What they haven’t been taught, is how to use this word. So though the student who wrote the top sentence has used the vo- cabulary they’ve been taught, their sen- tence is not nearly as sophisticated as the bottom one, where the student has put some thought into how they’re using the vocabulary. The strategies in this chapter do just that - support students to think about how they’re using vocabulary, not just what they’re using. Use strong, specific verbs When teachers develop vocabulary lists for units or word sets for vocabulary tasks, they tend to generate words which are nouns or adjectives. While using nouns and adjectives is important, quality writing benefits from frequent use of precise, strong verbs. This piece of year 12 writing below - an analysis of persuasive language - was assessed in an exam as a ‘medium’ response. When first drawn to this speech, readers are auto- matically driven to focus on the visual images pro- vided. One image has a globe sitting in someone’s hands. This would indicate to readers what this speech is about and that the message that the im- age is giving is that the world is in your hands. This would have a great affect on readers as they would feel responsible and needed to help in the world. The quote by Thomas Eisner that is given under the image is also significant. By referring to biodiversity as a ‘treasure’, readers are made to think that biodi- versity is rare, that it cannot be replaced and that it must be taken care of. Readers would also be im- pacted that biodiversity’s diminishment is to be pre- vented at all costs’, as it would appear that nothing should stand in the way, which highlights the impor- tance to readers. The other image given has a much lighter affect on readers. ‘2010’ is imprinted 3 P r e v i e
- 4. with images to tell readers what makes up biodiver- sity. With these images printed over ‘2010’, readers would presume that something to do with biodiver- sity is going to be done over this year. This writing, on the other hand, was as- sessed as an ‘upper range’ response: The alarmist tone transforms into an attack on the audience, not in a vicious way so as not to offend the audience, but instead urges them to want to take action. Lee contends that it is due to ‘our thoughtless human actions’ that species are suffer- ing, the ‘destruction of natural habitats, hunting,’ and the list continues. As it is ‘our’ fault that biodi- versity is diminishing , the speaker declares that it should be ‘us’ who reverse the trend, ‘We have no excuse for inaction.’ The continued use of inclusive language engages the audience and the speaker im- plies that it is their problem and they must right their wrong. Lee’s use of adjectives ‘wonderful’, ‘glossy’ and ‘inspiring’ all connote a glamorous, easy and passive method of convincing others to take action, and this is strongly contrasted when fol- lowed by ‘real action’. Here, the speaker accuses the conservationists and other influential people of not doing what they are supposed to do, opening their eyes to the reality of the situation. Lee de- scribes talk at the conference as ‘platitudes,’ this disapproving tone used to further reprimand the audience, and Lee passes on guilt with the words, a strong motivator for action. In nearly every sentence of the medium re- sponse, the student uses weak verb con- structions (is giving - the verb ‘giving’ needs the help of ‘is’) or non-specific verbs such as ‘has’ and versions of ‘to be’. The better response typically uses a strong (Lee describes - ‘describes’ stands on its own, it doesn’t need the help of ‘is’), spe- cific verb. The difference this verb use makes to the quality of writing is instantly obvious. On the opposite page are further examples of student writing - this time from year 6. These students were required to write a bi- ography about Australian bushranger Ned Kelly. This biography on the top has been assessed at a ‘satisfactory’ level the one at the bottom as ‘above satisfactory’. Here again we can see a difference in verb use. The better piece of writing makes consis- tent use of strong specific verbs, whereas in the ‘satisfactory’ piece, the student, af- ter a promising start, constructs a series of sentences that use a weak verb construc- tion. Simply put, better writers use better verbs. And this is a skill we can teach and that can have a profound impact on student writing. Here are a few activities that can get students practising using verbs: • Noun-verb match: In this vocabulary activity we provide stu- dents with a list of nouns and verbs. For ex- ample, if we were in the Year 6 class where students were writing about Ned Kelly, we 4 P r e v i e
- 6. might give them these words: Nouns: Ned Kelly, Ellen Kelly, Troopers, Prison, Escape, Family, Harry Power Verbs: Hold, Arrest, Support, Taught, Pur- sue The task of students is to match a noun with a verb it performs and then put them into a sentence. • Noun-verb-noun match A variation of this above activity is to give students a list of nouns which they need to match into pairs because they are strongly connected. If we gave students the nouns below they might match ‘Ned Kelly’ and ‘crimes’ together. Nouns: Ned Kelly, Ellen Kelly, Troopers, Prison, Escape, Family, Harry Power, Po- lice, Crime We then give students a list of verbs. Stu- dents need to pick out a verb that can go with each noun pair and then construct a sentence where one noun is performing this verb to another noun. For instance, if we gave the list of verbs below to stu- dents, they might pick out the verb ‘com- mit’ to go with ‘Ned Kelly’ and ‘crimes’. Verbs: Hold, Arrest, Commit, Support, Taught, Pursue, Dismiss • Verb planning The above activities work well with non- fiction writing. Strong verb use is just as much an attribute (in fact, perhaps more) of fictional writing as it is of expository. Where students write stories about charac- ters who perform strong, specific verbs, we get a better sense of the character and are more engaged in the story. In the para- graph from a Year 9 story below - the open- ing to a horror story - every sentence con- tains an active verb. Students can plan for specific, strong verb use when it comes to creative writing. In 6 P r e v i e
- 7. the planning stage, students need to con- sider: • Who is my character? • What are they like? • What specific verbs can they perform to show what they’re like? Students might start this activity by gener- ate adjectives to describe their character but then move on to identify verbs which demonstrate these characteristics. For ex- ample, we might develop a character who we could describe as: lazy, arrogant and greedy. Verbs to capture these attributes in our writing might be: lounges, strides and gobbles. A planning tool students can use to help them identify specific verbs is the ‘alterna- tive to common verbs’ sheet which is at- tached as a resource. This sheet lists the most common verbs students use and overuse in their writing: is, did, has, went, thinks, said, use and got - and lists syno- nyms for these words. This can be a start- ing point for students to consider which more specific verbs their character might perform than these generic ones. Students can pick out one or two verbs from each box on the sheet that their character might perform. Verb planning doesn’t need to be re- stricted to just the protagonist of a story. Students can also consider elements of the setting of their story - objects, weather, animals - and the specific actions they might perform. • Verb edit The verb edit is one of the simplest ways for students to identify weak and generic verb use in their writing and to improve it. In a nutshell, students re-read a piece of work and circle every instance of the verbs ‘is’, ‘are’, ‘was’ or ‘were’. Students then need to re-write at least three of the sen- tences (you can raise or lower this number depending on how much you want to chal- lenge your students) which feature these verbs so that they use a specific, active verb. Increase lexical density Lexical density (a phrase that literally means ‘words of thickness’) is about using more words to label or describe a subject or object noun in a sentence. The more words used to describe the noun, the more complex the idea, the better the writing. In this sentence, there are two nouns - ‘dog’ and ‘cat’: 7 P r e v i e
- 8. The dog chased the cat. Each noun is used on its own - there are no other nouns or adjectives which de- scribe the nouns in more detail. So this very simple sentence has no lexical den- sity. Let’s say we re-wrote the sentence as this: The neighbour’s large, terrifying dog chased the cat. Now we’ve got much more detail about the noun ‘dog’ - there are some adjectives describing it and another noun possessing it. It’s a lexically dense sentence (kind of). In better writing, stronger writers use more words to describe and label the subjects and objects of their sentences in order to create more complex statements. In the ex- ample on the next page - a Year 7 poetry analysis - the student rarely uses a noun on its own. Nearly all the nouns are cou- pled with other words (often many other words) to provide more detail. In the other example, though - a Year 10 response to Macbeth - the student often uses nouns on their own or couples them with only one or two other words. In terms of com- plexity - the Year 7 piece trumps the Year 10 piece, mostly because the Year 7 piece has superior lexical density. So how do we teach this to students? One way is to get students to build noun phrases before they complete writing tasks. We can give students a few nouns and ask them to think about what words could be used to add some detail to these nouns. The easiest point to start at will be for students to add adjectives. So if we were in the Year 10 classroom where stu- dents were writing about Macbeth, we might simply ask students: What adjec- tives can you put before the noun ‘witches’? • The mysterious witches • The creepy witches Another easy thing for students to do is to construct phrases where one noun pos- sesses another. In Macbeth, all of these nouns could own the witches: Shakespeare, Macbeth, The play, The text We give students an example: Shakespeare’s witches... Students then need to start a sentence of their own where ‘witches’ is the subject but something owns the witches. From this point we begin to get into more complex constructions. If we look again at 8 P r e v i e
- 9. 9 Year 7 Poetry Analysis Year 10 Macbeth Response P r e v i e
- 10. the Year 7 poetry example, we can see that one effective way this students adds detail to their nouns is by using an ‘of’ con- struction: the painful truth of the poems, ironic parody of the original poems, both of these poems. This is one of the more ad- vanced lexically dense constructions that stronger writers use (see a Year 12 exam- ple also), but it can still be taught. To go back to our Year 10 Macbeth classroom, we might say to students: What words could you put before this phrase to have a phrase that makes sense? • of witches Students might say: • The group of witches • The trio of witches After that, they might get a bit stuck. So we can scaffold them. Which of these nouns, we can ask, might you put before ‘of witches’? • Prediction, Anger, Symbolism, Fight, Inter- pretation, Depiction The task of students is then to write a se- ries of sentences that begin with different ‘of witches’ noun groups. Most students, from year levels 5 onwards, can complete these types of activities. This next activity in developing lexical density, though, is more appropriate for senior students. This activity uses a ‘word pyramid’ struc- ture to help students create successively more detailed and complex sentences where they use more words to label the subject of a sentence. Attached is a re- source called ‘Word pyramid’ which pro- vides a step by step set of instructions for students to use a visual word pyramid to create their longer and longer sentences. As stimulus for the activity, students can watch through the short video ‘Word Crimes’ by Weird Al Yankovic here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Gv0 H-vPoDc This is a generic vocabulary/sentence con- struction activity. Once students have used this procedure for writing about ‘Word Crimes’ the word pyramid can be adapted to use words for any topic being studied. Use prepositions to add detail ‘Add more detail’ is one of the most com- mon feedback comments we might give to middle and weaker writers. But what does it mean? Is it simply about writing more sentences at the end of a paragraph? Or is it adding more ‘describing’ words? This sentence here is fairly light on detail: 10 P r e v i e