This page provides parents with the broadest of overviews of the key areas to focus for narrative writing - the areas differs according to the different ability levels of students - before attempting to link parents to the other relevant site information according to the key focal areas.
Note
If a struggling writer receive advance writing instruction meant to help a student to score, it is highly likely that the student will not see much improvements as he or she has not met the requirements to pass. As such, the needs and areas of writing instruction of a struggling writer, who is failing, and an average writer who, is aiming to score, are different.
Note
If a struggling writer receive advance writing instruction meant to help a student to score, it is highly likely that the student will not see much improvements as he or she has not met the requirements to pass. As such, the needs and areas of writing instruction of a struggling writer, who is failing, and an average writer who, is aiming to score, are different.
DIFFERENT AREAS OF FOCUS (TO PASS OR SCORE) | ||
---|---|---|
Writing to pass | Writing to score | |
Area(s) to focus | 1. Basic technicals | 1. Content 2. Advanced technicals |
Note | A competency in basic technicals is required before embarking on content and advanced technicals. Technicals refers to the construction of an essay without an overwhelming focus on the story content. |
If you feel that the information in the table seems like a bunch of mumbo-jumbo, it probably is. As such, I aim to promote greater understanding by relating the activity of essay writing to the analogy of building a house.
WRITING TO PASS [ FOCUSING ON THE BASIC TECHNICALS ] |
||
---|---|---|
Analogy - Building a house | Areas of focus | |
1. |
Quality of building materials |
Accurate sentence construction [ Ensure that each written sentence is complete with accurate grammar and punctuation ] |
2. | Constructing a house | Ensure that the essential story elements in each paragraph of the essay are met |
1. Building materials
Treat each building material to represent one sentence. Achieving the minimum quality standards of the material is dependent on the ability of a student to write each complete sentence with no or minimal spelling, grammar, sentence structure or punctuation errors.
The following example show a sentence littered with grammar and sentence structure errors.
e.g. "Jack trip and fell into the ground when he tried to quickly run to the house."
Imagine if 50% of the sentences in the essay were to be plagued with sentence accuracy issues, it would mean that half the materials of the house is rotting - leading to the eventual collapse of the house.
As such, it is important that struggling writers gain competency in the following areas (please note that this list is not exhaustive):
1. Grammar
* regular tenses = adding '-ed' for action words that are written in past tense or past participle
(e.g. jump -> jumped; slam -> slammed)
*irregular tenses = transforming action words entirely when they are written in past tense or past participle
(e.g. fly -> flew -> flown; buy -> bought)
2. Sentence structure
Students who speak english as a second language may exhibit difficulties with sentence structure as they may bring over the sentence structure of their first language into the english language.
In addition, students in Singapore may face issues with sentence structure when Singlish rears its ugly head in their writing.
Quick tip
[describe a thing/person] + [thing/person]
e.g. 'The red shirt" [Correct]
"The shirt red" [Wrong]
Usually, the order should be reversed when the description of actions is involved.
[action] + [describe action]
e.g. "Jack ran quickly." [Correct]
"Jack quickly ran." [Wrong] -> Very common problem
[NOTE: There are exceptions to this order, but basic level sentence structure largely adheres to such a fixed structure.]
3. Punctuation
Note
Some students may find it difficult to understand the use of commas, resulting in a chronic problem of improper comma application. With regards to P6 students who are taking the PSLE English foundation paper, it is advisable that they omit the use of commas in their essays during PSLE for the sake of exam practicality.
Quick tip
Please discourage a struggling writers from including dialogue into their essays. Not only do struggling writers face an increased risk of punctuation errors, an essay populated by dialogues is usually seen as a sign of weak writing and the student may develop an over reliance on dialogues as a substitute for proper plot development, ideas and action sequences that are deemed to be more difficult to brainstorm.
My rule of thumb is to add at most two sentences of dialogues. Should punctuation issues persist, please omit the usage of dialogues altogether.
e.g. "Jack trip and fell into the ground when he tried to quickly run to the house."
Imagine if 50% of the sentences in the essay were to be plagued with sentence accuracy issues, it would mean that half the materials of the house is rotting - leading to the eventual collapse of the house.
As such, it is important that struggling writers gain competency in the following areas (please note that this list is not exhaustive):
1. Grammar
- Present tense, past tense and past participle (regular and irregular*) & its application
- Prepositions (e.g. 'in','on', 'into', 'onto', 'towards', 'within')
- Phrasal verbs - action word + preposition (e.g. fall out, fall down, fall apart)
* regular tenses = adding '-ed' for action words that are written in past tense or past participle
(e.g. jump -> jumped; slam -> slammed)
*irregular tenses = transforming action words entirely when they are written in past tense or past participle
(e.g. fly -> flew -> flown; buy -> bought)
2. Sentence structure
Students who speak english as a second language may exhibit difficulties with sentence structure as they may bring over the sentence structure of their first language into the english language.
In addition, students in Singapore may face issues with sentence structure when Singlish rears its ugly head in their writing.
Quick tip
[describe a thing/person] + [thing/person]
e.g. 'The red shirt" [Correct]
"The shirt red" [Wrong]
Usually, the order should be reversed when the description of actions is involved.
[action] + [describe action]
e.g. "Jack ran quickly." [Correct]
"Jack quickly ran." [Wrong] -> Very common problem
[NOTE: There are exceptions to this order, but basic level sentence structure largely adheres to such a fixed structure.]
3. Punctuation
Note
Some students may find it difficult to understand the use of commas, resulting in a chronic problem of improper comma application. With regards to P6 students who are taking the PSLE English foundation paper, it is advisable that they omit the use of commas in their essays during PSLE for the sake of exam practicality.
Quick tip
Please discourage a struggling writers from including dialogue into their essays. Not only do struggling writers face an increased risk of punctuation errors, an essay populated by dialogues is usually seen as a sign of weak writing and the student may develop an over reliance on dialogues as a substitute for proper plot development, ideas and action sequences that are deemed to be more difficult to brainstorm.
My rule of thumb is to add at most two sentences of dialogues. Should punctuation issues persist, please omit the usage of dialogues altogether.
2. Construction of the house
Now that the materials are available, the construction of the house commences. Different parts of the house requires different materials of various dimensions.In addition, workmanship is required to ensure that the materials 'interact' together and reinforce the foundation of the house.
Translating this analogy into essay 'speak', it means that:
(1) Different parts of the story require different elements unique to each paragraph
(For instance, a story needs to have an introduction, body paragraphs and conclusion. The body paragraphs should include conflict and resolution. These paragraphs consist of many elements that students are required to include in order to pass.)
(2) Like how beams are interconnected with each other to ensure that the house is standing, sentences should 'interact' well to ensure that the story flows. At the very least, the reader should be able to understand the story fairly well without having too many questions in mind.
Upon attaining the basic technicals of writing an essay, students will have an essay - or a house - constructed with the minimum requirements to pass. It is like a house that is white-washed. With no renovation nor furnishing, the house is exceedingly dull and plain - just an empty wooden house that is being held together by nails to fulfill the person's need of having shelter. The floor board may be loose and the roof may be slightly leaky. Regardless, it is still a house that is standing - albeit with cheap materials that is of passable standards. The same applies to the essay.
Please visit "Aiming to pass: Essential essay structure" for more information about this section.
Translating this analogy into essay 'speak', it means that:
(1) Different parts of the story require different elements unique to each paragraph
(For instance, a story needs to have an introduction, body paragraphs and conclusion. The body paragraphs should include conflict and resolution. These paragraphs consist of many elements that students are required to include in order to pass.)
(2) Like how beams are interconnected with each other to ensure that the house is standing, sentences should 'interact' well to ensure that the story flows. At the very least, the reader should be able to understand the story fairly well without having too many questions in mind.
Upon attaining the basic technicals of writing an essay, students will have an essay - or a house - constructed with the minimum requirements to pass. It is like a house that is white-washed. With no renovation nor furnishing, the house is exceedingly dull and plain - just an empty wooden house that is being held together by nails to fulfill the person's need of having shelter. The floor board may be loose and the roof may be slightly leaky. Regardless, it is still a house that is standing - albeit with cheap materials that is of passable standards. The same applies to the essay.
Please visit "Aiming to pass: Essential essay structure" for more information about this section.
Summary
When a student is aiming to pass, it is equivalent to a person building a house for his or her basic need of shelter and survival. There is no need to live in comfort. The structure, frame, sturdiness of the house is much more important than the aesthetics. As such, students who are struggling to pass have to prioritise on gaining competency of the basic writing technicals.
Some parents worry that their children would continue to recycle unoriginal story plots, that their essays would be an absolutely boring read.
Assuming that the essay is written with great technical accuracy (however basic and simple it may be*), the student will not fail with a boring essay.
[That being said, sentences that are too simple/basic are not really acceptable in the standard stream (upper primary).]
When a student is aiming to pass, it is equivalent to a person building a house for his or her basic need of shelter and survival. There is no need to live in comfort. The structure, frame, sturdiness of the house is much more important than the aesthetics. As such, students who are struggling to pass have to prioritise on gaining competency of the basic writing technicals.
Some parents worry that their children would continue to recycle unoriginal story plots, that their essays would be an absolutely boring read.
Assuming that the essay is written with great technical accuracy (however basic and simple it may be*), the student will not fail with a boring essay.
[That being said, sentences that are too simple/basic are not really acceptable in the standard stream (upper primary).]
WRITING TO SCORE [ FOCUSING ON THE ADVANCED TECHNICALS AND CONTENT ] |
||
---|---|---|
Analogy - Building a house | Areas of focus | |
1. | Quality of building materials | - Advanced sentence construction - Vocabulary |
2. | Renovating and furnishing the house | - Interest content and plot |
When a student is looking to score, enhance the quality of the essay. This also equates to a person wanting to live in comfort and style, the quality of the materials and the aesthetics of the house has to be considered.
1. Building materials
Improving the quality of the materials equates to improving the quality of the sentence. In order to do so, students have to expand the sentences, improve their vocabulary and, if possible, introduce sentence variation - all while grappling with the increasing demands of the accuracy in grammar, sentence structure and punctuation.
The following examples aim to demonstrate the differing criteria between students who are writing to pass and score.
Example 1: Basic sentence construction
Jim stood up quickly. He looked out to see if there were bullies. He felt scared.
Comments: The sentences are largely short with little description. In addition, the student wanted to write 'peered round the corner' but he did not have the vocabulary to do so.
Example 2: Intermediate sentence construction
Jim scrambled to his feet and peered round the corner for bullies. He felt his heart beating quickly in fear.
Comments: The sentence has been expanded in a meaningful way with more description and the vocabulary has been improved. I am of the view that the intermediate level of sentence construction should be sufficient enough for most of the primary school students in Singapore.
Example 3: Advanced sentence construction
Fear lodged at the back of his throat, Jim scrambled to his feet and peered round the corner for bullies.
Comments: The sentence was written in a more concise manner through the use of sentence variation without compromising on quality.
Parents may face challenges in teaching their children how to expand the sentences as there are simply too many different types of sentence variation. In addition, the unlimited range of vocabulary that a student seems to be required to know makes it very difficult for parents to know where and how to start teaching their children.
As such, please visit "Expanding the sentences" to address such concerns.
The following examples aim to demonstrate the differing criteria between students who are writing to pass and score.
Example 1: Basic sentence construction
Jim stood up quickly. He looked out to see if there were bullies. He felt scared.
Comments: The sentences are largely short with little description. In addition, the student wanted to write 'peered round the corner' but he did not have the vocabulary to do so.
Example 2: Intermediate sentence construction
Jim scrambled to his feet and peered round the corner for bullies. He felt his heart beating quickly in fear.
Comments: The sentence has been expanded in a meaningful way with more description and the vocabulary has been improved. I am of the view that the intermediate level of sentence construction should be sufficient enough for most of the primary school students in Singapore.
Example 3: Advanced sentence construction
Fear lodged at the back of his throat, Jim scrambled to his feet and peered round the corner for bullies.
Comments: The sentence was written in a more concise manner through the use of sentence variation without compromising on quality.
Parents may face challenges in teaching their children how to expand the sentences as there are simply too many different types of sentence variation. In addition, the unlimited range of vocabulary that a student seems to be required to know makes it very difficult for parents to know where and how to start teaching their children.
As such, please visit "Expanding the sentences" to address such concerns.
2. Renovating and furnishing the house
At last, the house undergoes renovation and furnishing due to emphasis placed on the aesthetics of the house. This translates into the last stage of writing an essay - the focus on content and presentation of the essay.
Ideally, the story plot should be interesting, original, gripping. Ideally, the reader should be left at the edge of their seats, understand the perspectives of the characters in the story... or at the very least, not pass out from boredom.
The sentences has to interact to the point where readers feel that the writing flows well. The most advanced of writers aim for the seamless integration of sentences into a cohesive story unit as the writing epitome,
Level: Basic - Example 1
The bullies caught Jim. They grabbed him by his shirt. The bullies slammed Jim against the wall. They punched him in the gut. Jim yelled in pain.
Level: Intermediate - Example 2
Grabbing him by the front of his shirt, the bullies slammed Jim against the wall. One of the bullies raised fist and punched Jim in the gut.
Hard.
Jim screamed. It felt like someone had stabbed him with a hot poker.
Level: Advanced - Example 3
The bullies grabbed Jim by the front of his shirt and slammed him against the wall, leaving him momentarily breathless and disorientated. Acting out of reflex, Jim clawed desperately at the fist that dug painfully into his chest when one bully delivered a vicious punch to his gut.
A searing mass of agony tore through his body in an instant and Jim distantly registered his screams.
Note
- As I have mentioned earlier, I am of the view that the intermediate level of writing is largely sufficient for most students. There is no need to aim for the writing epitome unless the student really loves narrative writing and would like to hone his or her craft. Please do not force your children to master advanced writing techniques if they clearly have no interest in doing so.
- There is no need to expect your child to churn out interesting and gripping content if the student is unable to do so. There are many reasons for the inability of students to produce interesting story content. One of the reasons could be that the student is a 'realist' and creative writing is simply just not his forte. (It is not in the scope of this site to explore the other reasons). A technically well-written story with a mildly interesting story plot works just as well.
- The general advice of reading more books to improve rings true when a student wishes to attain the advanced levels of the content and presentation of essays. Not only do students have to read relevant books to gain exposure, they have to read a lot of it such books; pay attention to the sequence of actions, sentence descriptions and presentation; and constantly mimic such sentences into their writing. Only then would the student achieve consistency in producing quality stories.
- Such mastery takes a very long time and upper primary students do not have the luxury of time. As such, students are made to memorise model essays in a bid to produce advanced writing content in a short period of time. I am perfectly fine if the parent wants the child to memorise model essays or do some other mind-numbing writing activity. While some people may claim that it kills creativity, it is just a very practical response to the Singapore education system.
- What does not sit well with me are parents who wish for their children to develop advanced writing skills organically (without memorising) but expect results in the short term. They expect their child to produce excellent writing for any essay question without too much effort. To put things into perspective, let me use my writing experience as a student. I could not write well for a good part of my primary and secondary school life. I started to train myself in narrative writing at the age of 16. It took me about 4 years to achieve the top end of intermediate levels of writing. I read fiction almost everyday and practiced writing every week ( initially producing about 2500 words per month). It took me another 4 years before I was confident enough to claim that I had entered the realm of advanced writing. At that point of time, my last project was an 11,000 word chapter of some fantasy story at fanfiction.net. It took me many years and lots of dedication to improve my writing skills organically. Indeed, the PSLE may be less demanding and does not require the level of finesse that is expected of teenage fiction, but expecting results within the year is really pushing it.
NARRATIVE SITE MAP
AREAS OF INSTRUCTION
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RELEVANT SITE INFORMATION
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TO PASS: Writing accurate sentences
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NOT AVAILABLE
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TO PASS: Essential story elements
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TO SCORE: Advance sentence construction
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TO SCORE: Writing aesthetics and content
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NOT AVAILABLE
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