english@kkc

Bob the Angry Flower is back and this time he is talking apostrophes. He may be blunt, he may be cruel but he knows how to use an apostrophe! Click the picture to get a larger image.

As a teacher I wouldn’t put it as bluntly as Bob the Angry Flower, but please remember the ‘it’s’ and ‘its’ rule. We have just graded quite a few of the Creative Writing scripts and we found that many of you still struggled with when to use ‘its’ and ‘it’s’.

Now’s your chance to let it all out!

Are you a budding cartoonist, critic, artist, reporter, designer, writer or photographer? Get your work into New Zealand’s biggest daily paper with The College Herald.

They are looking to feature work from as wide a range of people as possible. All ages, skills and viewpoints are welcome. It could be something you did for a class assignment ages ago, or it could be something you’ve created specially for The College Herald.

This year they are encouraging students to submit work online - though you may still submit by mail if you wish.

Either way, it’s very important that an English teacher authorises each individual student entry. When you enter online, your entry automatically gets forwarded to your English teacher for approval. If you are entering by mail, please ensure that your teacher’s name, faculty and email address is supplied on the entry form. Every mailed entry form must be signed by the teacher concerned.

They’re looking for anything that says what you want to say. This could include:

Articles, Letters to the editor, Photographs, Cartoons, Interviews, Poetry, Music reviews, Film and TV reviews, Investigative journalism, Painting, Collages, or Graphic design.

I found this really good article from ‘Writing’ at the Weekly Reader magazine on how to take your draft piece of writing to a final copy. It is a ‘how to’ guide with lots of really good advice and you can find it here.

If you are looking for some examples of creative writing written by young New Zealanders click the screenshot to get to the Tearaway website.

Congratulations to Isaac in Year 11 who has had his account of taking his first stag with a bow published in the latest Bowhunting New Zealand magazine. Here is an extract from ‘Sweet Success’ by Isaac:

At 4:30 in the morning my eyes snapped open and I hit the alarm clock like it’d done something personal to me. I heard the soft patter of rain on the roof. The deer would all be holed up in their cozy little bedding places, making no noise and laughing at anyone stupid enough to be hunting the Kaimais.

I’d hunted this small area, maybe a kilometre by a kilometre, nearly every weekend for about a year. By now I had a pretty good idea of where the deer would be at different times of the year. For each time of the year, I knew what time of day they liked to be in different places and in different weather conditions. The deer up there seem to hang out in a few mobs of about eight. It is reasonably rare to see a solitary animal in this area. I have been thwarted by this a few times as I’ve stalked in on animals, only to have them gap it when their unseen mate warns to them. The previous night I’d been hunting up there and had got on to a few pigs and had seen one of the aforementioned mobs on one of the many small clearings on my way back home. They’d only been a few metres away but it was too dark to see my sights and the deer were pretty hard to see so I left them for the following morning. As we drove up the rain started to ease off to a light drizzle. Now that it was light enough to see I could see that there was a very thick mist all around. Dad dropped me off and wished me luck. There wasn’t a breath of wind to disturb the mist so I was heartened, one less thing to worry about. I slowly made my way up the ridge waiting at the edge of each clearing until satisfied that no deer lurked there in the heavy mist.

To read the rest grab the latest Bowhunting New Zealand magazine.

Don’t it just!

As an English teacher I have seen a great deal of apostrophe abuse in my time and I am pleased to see that someone is finally doing something about it. The Home for Abused Apostrophes is a haven for little punctuation marks which have been cruelly misused by shopkeepers and other uncaring notice-writers. Here they may be cosseted and coddled by a punctuation-enthusiast; allowed to mix with other survivors of apostrophe-abuse; perhaps one day returned to the community to do useful work in contracted words or to show ownership. Check out the website to see more examples of apostrophe abuse.

By now all of you will know how important it is to proof-read your writing, especially in NCEA assessments. Proof-reading is not an easy task for everyone and I have put some tips below. For more information go to BBC Skillswise.

Here are some effective tips to start you off:

• Try listening to the sound of your voice ‘inside your head’ as you read. This will help you spot if any words have been left out. Make sure not only that the words are spelled correctly but that the meaning of the sentence as a whole is clear.

• Try writing problem words out several different ways to see which version looks right. This will help to improve your visual memory, so that you feel more confident in correcting your spelling.

• Make sure that facts (such as names or places) are clearly written and correct. Double check these if necessary.

• Focus on words which you know give you problems. These will vary from person to person, but they could be words with a particular ending (such as -ing) or a soft ‘c’ as in ‘cinema’ or ‘centre’.

• Pay special attention to homophones - words that sound the same but are spelt differently and have different meanings. For instance:
  there and their
  two and too

• Don’t rely on a computer spell checker to find every mistake. It won’t pick up errors such as using ‘bean’ instead of ‘been’.

• Make sure you leave enough time to proofread your writing carefully.

Here is a little more writing advice for those of you that are grappling with creative writing at the moment. The extracts are from Chapter One of The Elements of Good Writing by Mem Fox and Lyn Wilkinson and they are about personal voice.

Good writing has voice.

“Good writing has a living, unique person behind it. It doesn’t sound as if it has been written by a soul-less computer in one office, for a mindless fax in another. It has personality.”

“When you write, let your personality, your real self, be heard in what you say and in the way you say it: that’s what ‘voice’ means. If you’re funny, be funny in your writing. If you’re zany, be zany. If you’re deeply sensitive, be deeply sensitive.”

“The presence of voice will indicate to readers that above and beyond the sweat and the bother, the writer has actually enjoyed writing the piece. Voice reveals a lively commitment to the writing task, a desire to be read, a high level of care. Let your voice be heard. It will make your writing come alive.”

toothpastefordinner.com

In the next few weeks your English teacher will discuss the importance of using writing conventions accurately. What does that mean?

Writing conventions are the rules used when writing such as spelling, punctuation, grammar, word choice, order of words, and paragraphing.

Accurately means work has been closely and carefully proofread to a near perfect standard with limited errors, so that only a few minor mistakes would have to be changed if it were to be published.