A* in English

In todays lesson we looked at another piece of work from GeoffBarton – we looked at his ‘How to get an A* in English’ guide.

I feel that the 5 most important points that he makes are:

1. In the READING Section – You don’t use the first word that comes into your head; you realise hat language is rich and that we make choices about whether to say “the big event” or the “major / significant / momentous / important / ground- breaking / event” based on context and audience. I think that this is an important point because I think its very true, to get an A*, one must be using the best possible vocabulary therefore when writing, time must be taken to replace everyday words with A* words.

2. In the WRITING section – Use a range of punctuation to add nuances to your work – commas, semi- colons, colons, dashes. I think that this point is important because in order to impress, everything should be done to the highest standard including the most complexed punctuation – however, it must be used correctly other wise it won’t look impressive.

3. READING – Every point addresses the questions ‘why?’ or ‘how?’ This point is extremely important when analysing any piece of work. If you make a statement of include something from the text, one must be able to talk about it so always ensure to say something that will bring up an interesting, high-level discussion.

4. WRITING TIPS – Make it sensuous, especially visual.  This is also another very significant point, your writing must be interesting! It should make the reader want to think and should allow the readers imagination to come to life. If the language is powerful, it will achieve high marks.

5. WRITING TIPS – Use paragraphs for effect – eg long / very short and drop paragraphs.  Not only is the context of the writing extremely important, but so is the layout and how the writing is set out. This is an interesting point that is very important. Vary lengths of the paragraphs and make it more visually appealing. Not only will this look more professional, it will add effect to the writing and it will score an A*

 

I feel that the 5 most important things that can improve my writing the most is: 

1. THE WHO? WHAT? HOW? Approach to reading – I think that if I focus on this aspect of my reading and really analyse and think about what I’m reading than I will be able to understand the text in a lot more depth which will allow me to improve my analytical writing.

2. 5 steps to A* Vocabulary – Personally, I think that my vocabulary is not at an A* star standard, and I think that this guide can really help to improve my vocabulary. Because if the vocabulary is advanced, it immediately makes a piece of writing so much better – consequently, if I do improve my vocabulary I feel I could definitely improve my writing.

3. Read A lot – I definitely think that this will improve my writing. As I don’t read often enough as I should, I feel that this is letting my writing down and this causes me to lack in complexed vocabulary. If I read a lot, my writing will improve.

4. Will have lexical variety that avoids repetition, including adept deployment of pronouns – I think that this point is extremely important, and I feel it relates to me in particular. I tend to have a lot of repetition in my writing and I therefore need to vary what I say and chose my words carefully to get my writing up to A* level.

5. Embeds of very short, well-selected quotations – I think that if I include carefully selected quotations and if I embed them well into the text than this will raise the complexity of my writing and it will help me to personally improve.

Evolution of VOGUE

Vogue Magazine, one of the most well known, world renowned fashion magazines of all time. Started as a small organisation publishing a magazine bi-monthly. The first magazine was published in 1892 – and in 1909 the company was taken over by Condé Nast and was transformed into weekly magazine. By 1960, the magazine was mainly based on modern/contemporary fashion and was aimed at young girls. In 1973 it became a magazine that was published every month, the magazine underwent many changes to suit their target audience. Since the first publication in 1892, there have been 12,995 issues of Vogue published worldwide. The main changes from Vogue in 1892 to Vogue in 2013 are definitely the layout of the magazine, the colours, the content and the imagery. Vogue has influenced American society and modern day women for the past 100 years and it will always remain on top of all fashion and fashion magazines.

Source of Information: http://vogueellebazaar.wordpress.com/2012/02/27/how-vogue-has-changed-over-time/

IMPROVE YOUR READING SKILLS: 2 MONSTER TECHNIQUES

Today we learnt about 2 major techniques to improving our reading skills, by doing this exercise of analysing texts, it will help prepare us for our exams. 

We used the link from GeoffBarton – GCSE Masterclass

I chose to analyse Text B and Text D.

Text B: Proud mum in a million Natalie Brown hugged her beautiful baby daughter Casey yesterday and said: “She’s my double miracle.” 

We can see that this piece of text is based on opinion, not fact. The writer uses personal anecdotes to create a sense of vivid imagery, He is describing the opinion of the Mum of her daughter, which is opinionated writing. The piece of text has a personal feel and his use of personal pronouns such as ‘She and Her’ add to the fact the piece is personal. Not only is a personal piece of writing, it is also an informal extract. The language used is fairly colloquial and is written in an ‘everyday’ style of language, which of course makes the text seem much more informal. 

Text D: There was a double eclipse in the early autumn of 1605 – a lunar eclipse on 19 September followed by an eclipse of the sun in early October. Such celestial phenomena were traditional held to ‘portend no good’. 

This piece of writing has a major contrast compared to the above piece of text. We can tell that this section of text is much more impersonal. The text is full of facts and includes many statistics – There are no personal pronouns used in the text, making it a lot more impersonal. In addition to the piece of text being impersonal, it is also very formal – it uses informative language that is also very scientific and fact-based, the sentence structure is also more complexed than the other piece of writing and overall it is a very formal, impersonal piece of text.  

What do I need to do to improve my writing?

I feel that I am fairly strong in most section of english and english grammar, however I do think that there are certain things that I do need work on. In order to prepare for our exam, I think I will focus on my analytical phrases and my sentence structure. To improve, I will use the help of the BBC Skillwise sentence grammar – http://www.bbc.co.uk/skillswise/topic/sentence-structure and if I use this effectively, I think I could improve. Not only this, but if I do a lot of reading I feel I will be more confident for my exam.