Edusites English Friday Takeaway

 
From: "Edusites English" <communication@PROTECTED>
Subject: Edusites English Friday Takeaway
Date: January 17th 2018

This week's Friday Takeaway is a change from the usual. Our A Level English Language Guides for Students, originally written for the legacy specifications, are an example of quality recycling.

Below is an Edusites English Student Guide that will, hopefully, help your own students to a deeper and useful understanding of the key idea of context. Many students struggle with this concept which, along with purpose, audience and genre must surely rank as one of the four key aspects of all texts; indeed, it could be argued that, along with the individual writer or speaker of a text, context is the main aspect of central concern as, from these two, all others flow. With that in mind, this guide also touches on purpose, audience and genre although you’ll find other guides to these here on Edusites English.

What follows is a guide written for students that, I hope, will help them write more effective essays. Even an essay that gains a lowly grade will often be the result of a substantial amount of time and effort from the student; and the chances are that he or she felt all along that their writing was ‘going wrong’ somehow – but press on they must, on to what must at times seem like the bitter end. How frustrating and perhaps even belittling this process can be for the student – and how much, too, it likely reduces that student’s chances of enjoying this genuinely inspiring and wonderful subject. This essay writing guide results from many years of teaching essays in a way that I have found seems to make writing them far more enjoyable. The ideas initially came from experience of the way American teachers teach essay writing skills. The method enables students to start their essays in a way that suggests an individual response, creates authority and impact, and also allows the remaining body paragraphs to flow on logically. This helps the student to write essays that are clearly structured and much more interesting both to write and to read. Crucially, it takes away the energy-zapping frustration of wondering what to write about next.

These Friday Takeaways can be made into student guides using this guide to making booklets.

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