TR&W Issue 20

56 | www.teachwire.net trousers, surveyed the boy with a maniacal, withering look. C: The old man gave the boy a withering look. Which sentence works best? And, yes, this depends on the sentence’s context and purpose, but for now, let’s just choose. What’s your gut reaction? I would pick C as the best option. A would follow in second, and B third. However, time and time again, it seems that the overwritten sentences, like B, garner the most praise. Let’s give this sentence a I n classrooms, you see words everywhere. Laminated word lists are plastered on every wall. Words are written in special pen on the windows. Thesauruses and dictionaries are stacked on shelves. Our schools are awash with words – from the books we read, to the lessons we teach and the conversations we have. So, how do we choose which words to focus on? How can you teach pupils to use the best words in their writing and be precise in their vocabulary choices? Good practice If we want to improve our pupils’ knowledge of language, and equip them with words with which to charge into battle, we need to be organised and smart. Most of all, we must teach children how to be independent in their word choices. I’ve sat with fellow educators who were wowed by a piece of writing for its ‘gorgeous’ word choices, while I was concerned by its grammatical and sentence construction errors. I’ve also seen teachers highlight the use of ‘said’ as a weakness, while I’ve wanted to scream that ‘said’ is a perfectly good choice. ‘“I want to suck your blood!” postulated the vampire’ is poor writing. Let’s look at three invented samples from a Year 6 pupil: A: The ancient man looked at the boy and gave him an evil look. B: The decrepit man, wearing a white crimplene shirt and tan purpose: I want the old man to intimidate the boy and make him feel small. This old man is an incidental character who will not be in the story again. Now let’s examine each sentence again with this purpose in mind. The ancient man looked at the boy and gave him an evil look. ‘Ancient man’ implies that he is some sort of pre-history Neanderthal. If he’s old, let’s just say that. Also, ‘evil’ doesn’t quite fit the purpose that the more precise word choice of ‘withering’ does. The decrepit man, wearing a white crimplene shirt and tan trousers, surveyed the boy with a maniacal, withering look. Why ‘decrepit’? This is an adjective meaning infirm or in bad condition. I could instead show this through the man using a walking stick or having a frail body, tired eyes or thin, white, wispy hair. Is the fact that he is wearing a crimplene shirt and tan trousers important? If so, great! But I’m going to guess that the choice to describe his clothes is an arbitrary one here. ‘Surveyed’ means to look carefully, but this contradicts the ‘withering look’. And ‘maniacal’ means he looks like he’s suffering from mania. (Beatlemania? Wrestlemania?) He is delivering three looks at OF WORDS Changing our view Christopher Youles takes a fresh look at teaching vocabulary for narrative writing “I believe we should focus spelling on words that could be applied in multiple contexts”