“Where do I start?”  Or “I don’t know where to start.”

Ever heard anything like that from your teen?

And have you or one of their teachers ever, in a totally well-meaning way, ever replied with
“Just start somewhere.”

Or, maybe been tempted to say
“Try anything just to get started.”
“Start with the bit you do know.”

Unfortunately, that’s not good advice.

It’s coming from a place of encouragement and action, but it can just lead to many hours of wasted time and energy. And plenty of frustration and disheartenment to boot.

So what to do instead?

Plan.

Make a clear plan of what needs to be done and what’s going into each element.

So for an essay, just having a plan that says intro, body paragraph 1, body paragraph 2, and 3 and conclusion isn’t good enough. It’s a fraction better than having zero structure, but it’s definitely not enough.

Now, I’m not going to go into all the details of what should exactly go into a plan, and HOW to do it.
I do that in my Write Like an A-Grader Training.

Instead I want to focus simply on why that plan is so essential
and why it’s such an amazing indicator of whether a student is going to complete a task smoothly and successfully,
or whether they’re heading into the dreaded waffle zone,
(or not even that far – staying stuck and frustrated with a blank screen or blank page in front of them).

Because if your teen isn’t able to make a clear and detailed plan,
then they aren’t going to be able to write a clear and cohesive, high quality response.

In other words, if they don’t know what to put in their plan,
then it’s no wonder they are feeling stuck and finding it hard to get started or make progress.

They’re likely confused or simply feeling kinda empty about what they need to do and how to do it.

To make a plan, they need two things:

• They need to learn how to identify what a task or question or essay title is REALLY asking and what they need to do to respond appropriately.

And

• They need to be clear on the subject content and how it links to the demands of the task.

Only THEN will they be able to devise a thesis statement or have a clear focus.

And only with THAT will they be able to pick out the evidence and examples that need to go in their body paragraphs.

These are the things that need to go into their plan.

The direction or focus or thesis
and then
the content to support that.

If they aren’t able to create a clear plan, then they have little hope of creating even a satisfactory response.

So many students want to bypass the planning stage because they feel it’s time-consuming and they want to just dive straight in.

The total.opposite. is true.

The planning stage is not only an essential part of crafting a high quality response,
but it’s a very clear indicator of whether your teen’s clear on the task, the demands of the command word (or words!) and the focus of every paragraph.

So if your teen’s feeling stuck, confused or finds themselves in the waffle zone part way through an extended response, assignment or essay task,
then they need to go back to the planning stage.

Figure that out first, use the gaps in it to guide them on getting the help and clarity they need
and the rest will become a LOT quicker, smoother and more successful.

If you know anyone else who’d benefit from this tip, then feel free to forward it or share it online,
and until next week, let’s make this a fantastic week!

Katie

When it comes to writing, students need to show they can craft their writing to the purpose of the assignment or to the audience they’re writing for.

So it’s essential that your teen’s skilled at adapting their style and vocabulary depending on the type of task.

That’s why I’m gonna share with you a quick and simple trick they can use to do this easily and instantly.
(Yep, really!)

I love this snappy little technique, because it’s super simple, really quick (no genius brain cells required) but also hugely effective.

I can tell you, from marking hundreds, actually it’s probably thousands, of creative and formal writing exams, that this ‘style’ or ‘appropriate to genre’ element is a critical part of the marking criteria for almost any task.

Now, there are LOTS of different types of formats, genres and forms of written tasks.
Some of the most obvious or common are narratives or short stories, persuasive speeches, inquiries, analytical essays, scientific reports, feature articles… and that’s just a few.

There are heaps more.

So I want to share with you one of the ways to make a clear distinction between these, and then a simple but effective way your teen can adapt their writing to fit it.

Right, STEP ONE:

Your teen needs to determine whether their task requires them to write formally or informally.

Examples of a formal assignment include:
– an analytical essay,
– a research report,
– a scientific investigation,
– a historical enquiry.

Examples requiring a less formal writing style include:
– a monologue,
– a narrative (AKA a short story),
– a blog article
or even
– a movie or book review,
or
– magazine column.

Of course these examples are not exhaustive and this is really a continuous scale.
After all, when it comes to a speech, an official speech from the Prime Minister would be quite different in style and formality compared to a speech at a wedding!

So that first step is to consider where the task lies on the scale from formal to casual.

Then, once they‘ve determined what level of formality their writing needs to take – they can think about…

STEP TWO:
Identifying the tools and techniques that are most appropriate and getting to work on incorporating them into their writing.

Wow, there are LOTS of different tools.

So I want to give you just one.
Why?

Because it’s one of the simplest and easiest, but super-effective tricks to make their writing instantly stand out as either formal or informal.

It’s using CONTRACTIONS – or – NOT using them.

Let’s take a quick flash back to English grammar lessons…
*cue floaty flashback music*

Contractions are where we join two words to make one with an apostrophe.
Like:

• it is – becomes – it’s
• where has my pen gone – becomes – where’s my pen gone?

And from that last example you can probably already see the effect this little change has.

Contractions make things more casual.
They’re great for using in direct speech for characters in a story.

— Oooh – there’s another one – see how I contracted they are to they’re 😉

Anyway…

Students should use contractions when they want to produce a less formal style of writing.
Perhaps for a script or a blog, or even a feature article.

And the opposite is true for formal writing.

Keeping all words complete and separate keeps writing sound a lot more serious and official.
Like this: They are good for science reports, essays and other formal style tasks.
See how that already sounds more official than ‘They’re good’?

Have your teen give it a go.

You’ll be surprised at the difference it makes and how it can boost their achievement in writing appropriately to the task, genre or specified audience.

Then, once you’ve seen what a difference such a tiny tweak can make,
go check out my Write Like an A-Grader online training – 9 short and powerful modules for creating writing that WOW’s the marker!

It’s packed with strategies, tips and techniques like this and much more sophisticated ones too, from coming up with A-Grade ideas and structuring them, to the final edit and proofread.

And if you know anyone else who’d benefit from this tip, then please feel free to forward them a link to this video or blog article and feel free to share it on your social media.

And until next week, let’s make this a fantastic week!

Yours,
Katie 🙂