Slow Writing: how slowing down can improve your writing : May 12, 2012
Exam season is nearly upon us and English departments across the land will be gearing up to the Herculean labour of training students to churn out essays which, they hope, will earn them the much coveted A*-C grade in English Language.
The AQA paper gives candidates just a meagre hour to write a short descriptive, explanatory piece and then a longer piece which asks them to persuade and argue.
This isn’t much time and most students default position is to race into it, cram in as much verbiage as possible and then down tools to watch the clock tick away the purgatory of the exam hall. This is not a great strategy for producing great writing. So, we teach them to plan (of which there’s a fine example from Lisa Janes Ashes here) and to proofread in the hope that maybe, just maybe they’ll approach their writing more thoughtfully and produce something that won’t make the poor examiner groan in anguished suffering.
But is less perhaps more? Over the past few years I’ve been experimenting with what, for want of a better idea, I’m calling Slow Writing. The idea is to get students to slow the hell down and approach each word, sentence and paragraph with love and attention. Obviously they’ll write less but what they do write will be beautifully wrought and finely honed.
Here’s how it works.
Firstly, I tell students that we will be drafting rather than writing. Then I tell them to double space their writing. They find this inordinately difficult so I’ve taken to providing them with double spaced paper to get them into the habit. I then give them a topic and ask them to complete a set of seemingly random exercises. For example:
1. Your first sentence must starting with a present participle (that’s a verb ending in ‘ing’)
2. Your second sentence must contain only three words.
3. Your third sentence must contain a semi-colon
6. Your fourth sentence must be a rhetorical question
5. Your fifth sentence will start with an adverb
6. Your sixth sentence will contain a simile
The point of it is that they have to slow right down in order to think about their technique. Generally speaking, students find it straightforward to write what they want but it’s much harder for them to think about how they’re going to write it. This process forces them to concentrate on the how instead of the what.
Hopefully they will be busily scribbling all over their draft and putting the new ideas in the acres of space made available by double spacing their writing. A neat and tidy exam script is one which has not been perfected, is full of mistakes and will get a lower grade.
Other Slow Writing ideas include:
- pop a load of different sentence instructions into a hat and give everyone a random selection
- giving students lists of numbers and telling that the number of words in their sentences must conform to these numbers.
- paired writing – get students to write alternate sentences and question each other about their choices
- use a professionally written text on a different subject and get students to copy the structure and techniques
Ah, Twilight. That time of day when the boundaries between night and day begin to blur. The moment when the sun begins to set and when all those things that go bump in the night stretch, yawn and start feeling that unbearable urge to pee. The very name is a clue to understanding what this film is all about: you see it’s not one thing or another. It’s not just happy daytime romance and it’s definitely not all night-time terror. Just like the name implies it’s somewhere in between. So, is this a strength or a weakness? You could take the view that it’s this quality that helps the film to appeal to as wide an audience as possible: you get the chic flick crowd as well as the Goths. Or, on the other hand, does it make the whole thing impossibly and disastrously diluted?
Pretty good, huh?
I’m sure none of this is particularly original but it’s certainly helped me to help my student see writing as something which can, and should be consciously crafted. If you do anything else which helps, I’d love to add it to my repetoire.
Update
The heroically proportioned David Riley has already started work on an interactive version for his superb suite of teaching tools, Triptico. And it’s looking very nice!
Also, here’s a lovely post from Lindsay Mason on using board games to improve writing.
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So many ideas I haven’t tried! Will start using ASAP! Thanks, David.
Thanks, David. Yet more incredible ideas from your creative mind. This makes perfect sense to me – I shall definitely give this a go next week.
This is fantastic. I’m continuing revision for the writing section of the exam this week with my students, and I’ll definitely be setting them this. They are all Foundation Tier students, but this has great potential for them. Getting them to think about the how of what they write has been really difficult, so thanks for this.
Paul, James & Helene
Thanks for the thumbs up. I’d love to hear how you get on.
Cheers, David
Thanks David, some lovely ideas.
I’m also preparing a set of year 11s for the English Language exam. My lot are doing the language only route. It’s sometimes tough to get them to think carefully and reflectively about their own writing, especially when FFT and target grades are so low (despite me only ever using C grade or higher criteria in our lessons).
This has a lot of potential for my group, especially those with a tendency to write extremely long compound sentences rather than developing paragraphs with a variety of sentence structures. I’ll try this Wednesday.
Thanks
P.S. Great way to subtly teach grammar as well!
Hi David,
These ideas have great implications for the MFL classroom too. I teach French and not only do students have to demonstrate a rich and varied vocabulary, but they must do so with an array of verb constructions too. The ‘writing to order’ idea combines these aspects beautifully. I also feel getting them to slow down would help them reflect on their overall linguistic accuracy and hopefully help minimise language errors. It would seem students dont proof read in any language! Many thanks for sharing.
Jacqui
Some great ideas here. Thanks for sharing.
My mum (who was a Primary 7 teacher) used to make her classes write stories and every other sentence had to begin with an ‘-ing’ word. Another favourite of hers was that no two sentences in a story could begin with the same word (Checked by getting them to write the first word of each sentence in the margin as well). The “treat” for the class was that she did let them start sentences with the words they weren’t supposed to, like ‘because’.
I’m delighted to stil use all these techniques with some considerable success. I suspect my mum would have loved your ideas here.
Your mum sounds like a woman after my own heart!
Very interesting. I did write a longer comment, but logging in and being allowed to leave a reply has been a long long process!
Oh, how tedious. I’m sorry to hear how complex the commenting procedure is – I will sack some minions with immediate effect.
If you want to give me some feedback on SloW Writing you could do it via Twitter – @LearningSpy
It’s very much how I used to run poetry workshops for adults years ago – except we would take each word from a well known poem and find out what all the associations were. Each person had to take ownership of that word and all the things it conveyed. I wasn’t surprised to see the technique used in the Coursera modern 20th century writing course seminar videos – if you get a chance look at them.
I really like these ideas, and am currently using them with various groups with considerable success.
Another strategy that I picked up years ago from @RealGeoff Barton was this – to demand that every paragraph should consist of the following sentences, in this order:
simple – compound – complex – simple
The simple sentences at the start and end of the paragraph help some pupils to link their points more easily. Whilst the strategy can be quite restricting for more able pupils, it can easily be abandoned when you are happy that they can cope alone. On the other hand, it can provide a really useful reminder to many about the importance of sentence variety – and it amazes some kids that it helps to make their writing sound much more interesting!