The 5 Big Ideas of English Language

A Little Light Grammar

Remember when grammar was taught rigorously, and sentences were parsed, and students learned Latin, and etymology and spelling made sense? No. These were the 1950s, and gradually English teaching turned 180% and grammar and spelling were picked up by exposure to language and books, and there were no rules and infinitives were boldly split. And then came the literacy strategy, and the literacy hour, and text types, and paragraph, sentence and word level analysis. And then came Gove and Gibb, and grammar splattered across Key Stage 2 like confetti.

Well, I’d like to suggest that, though they are 180% degrees apart in places, these approaches all worked. Everything works, because brains are learning machines, makers of meaning.

But none of these approaches are simple. The ‘exposure’ route is random: what do we teach from all these books? The ‘grammar, sentence and word level’ route is awash with rules, and students don’t get to write interesting texts. They just keep practising pieces of texts, meeting artificial criteria.

What if, instead of this, we can simply focus on the 5 Big Ideas of English language and writing. What if, no matter what the writing task, no matter what the context, we just have to focus on these 5 things?

Would that be simple? Would it be profound? I think it would. If I were starting my writing curriculum from scratch, every lesson would focus on one or more of these 5 big ideas, no matter what the task.

5 Big Ideas

1. Verbs matter more than nouns. Nouns matter more than adjectives. Adjectives matter more than adverbs. Adverbs can usually be replaced by a better verb.

2. Imagery is essential to all writing. Metaphor is superior to simile. Personification can be simile or metaphor. Imagery can be created by sound.

3. Sound matters at sentence level, much more than word level. So sibilance and consonance matter more than alliteration. Alliteration matters more than assonance. Assonance is superior to onomatopoeia. Repetition in all its forms (there were 15 in Greek rhetoric as you will see later), creates rhythm and pace. Sibilance, consonance, alliteration and assonance also affect rhythm, pace and the tone of a text, and also make it more memorable, as does repetition.

4. All writing needs conflict, even descriptive writing in which nothing is happening. Conflict is most frequently created through contrast and juxtaposition.

5. Sentences have to make sense. Every new idea needs another piece of punctuation.

If we taught from these 5 things with every text we studied, all our students would dramatically improve their writing.

We should also teach these 5 as success criteria with all the creative writing we teach. You will see these in action when we look at how to teach creative writing – poetry, description, narrative, persuasion and argument.

The Writing Revolution

This brings me into a potential conflict with The Writing Revolution, a book which is having a large impact on English departments. My subjective experience is that English teachers have focused on their recommendations for practising lots of activities at sentence level, then building up towards paragraph level. I see lots of curricula where students practise a variety of sentences, like a musician practices scales, or a rugby player practices drills. But, to stretch the analogies, it is like learning the scales without every composing, or playing pieces of music. It is endless drills, with games played only once a month. The sentence level activities from The Writing Revolution are everywhere!

I feel this is a misinterpretation of the aim of the book, and the curriculum it describes. Their TWR 6 principles are:

1. Explicit instruction in writing is necessary, and should begin in elementary grades

2. Sentences are taught explicitly as the building blocks of all writing

3. Writing is a way to teach the content of the whole school curriculum

4. The content of the curriculum comes first, and the writing activity is a tool to learn it

5. Grammar is not taught as a separate topic, but in the context of the writing tasks

6. The two most important elements of writing are planning and revising. (This latter refers to what they call longer compositions, especially essays).

I think the issue with the way I have seen this applied is that schools have by and large ignored point 6, and tend not to teach essay writing in a meaningful way from year 7. And perhaps they have lost sight of 3 and 4 – the sentences themselves are not primarily models of good writing, they are intended as ways for students to better express their understanding of curriculum knowledge, or facts. They are therefore much more appropriate to writing in subjects other than English. They are a whole school approach to writing, not an English writing curriculum.

My other conclusion, reading the book, is that although the TWR system for teaching writing is very well sequenced, it is rather unambitious in our context. For example, nearly all the students at TWR schools are disadvantaged, and many have English as second language (both of which are predictors of low attainment in America. But in the UK, EAL students outperform everyone else in progress and attainment).

Their data shows that “the pass rates (my emphasis) for geography and history rose from 64% to 75% and English from 67% to 89%.” How impressive are these? It is difficult to say without progress measures. But what we can infer is that the focus has been on improving the “pass rate”, rather than the skills of students who would already have passed – in other words it is the equivalent of our old focus on students at the C/D borderline. Reading the book feels to me like a curriculum designed to dramatically help students who don’t know how to write, rather than one aimed at making all students excellent writers. This is confirmed by the examples of student writing in the book, which frequently look at progress of EAL students (the ones who in our own context make most progress anyway and also attain more than those for whom English is a first language).

Moreover, the main visible impact of their approach was in the students’ motivation and behavior. Prior to this, students simply finished exams early, and left the exam room, with many of their papers left incomplete. Now teachers were amazed to watch their students plan their answers. “Even more amazing was the fact that the students kept writing for the entire allotted time”.

And this seems to me to be the underlying cause of success, even more than the quality of writing. Students had effectively been trained to work hard. My own analysis of English department results in the UK bears this out – up to 20% of students in my school used to put no effort into question 5, worth 50% of the English language grade, and a similar proportion struggled to put any effort into question 4, worth over 20%. I’ve seen similar figures in other schools with low progress. This had nothing to do with the quality of what they had been taught, and everything to do with the culture of the school. When we transformed the progress of students at Kingsdown school, introducing a culture of hard work was our first priority, way, way ahead of improving teaching.

When we analyse the top 50 or 100 schools in the country by Progress 8, we will find exactly this pattern – school culture makes the students work hard. Indeed, consider that EAL students (who are more frequently disadvantaged than their peers) have higher attainment than white English-speaking students nationally. A culture of hard work is the most obvious explanation of their dramatic progress and superior attainment.

The data published by TWR bears a similar story. Students improved their grades because they worked harder, and put more effort into the exam. That is what led to their success. They changed their students’ beliefs. Obviously the quality of their writing also improved. But that’s because everything works.

It doesn’t mean they wouldn’t have improved much more with different methods. My money is on the 5 big ideas, and students reading and writing real texts.

If your curious to know how it would work, read The Full English.

If you want to be brilliant English teacher, you’ll like The Full English

If you want to find out how to get great progress from students in any subject, you’ll like The Slightly Awesome Teacher

If you want to pass Ofsted with flying colours, you’ll like The Unofficial Ofsted Survival Guide

If you want a quick guide to How to Improve Your School, click here