Hi everyone. My name’s Karla Sabella, and I’ve been working with students for many, many years now on their writing and in particular, how to prepare for exams, particularly English. And one of the things I wanna talk to you about today is how to come up with ideas for the areas of writing, like creative or imaginative writing, discursive writing, and persuasive writing. All of which are now being done, you know, from primary school level up. And I think it’s a fantastic addition to the types of writing expected for English, because it’s really forcing you and to have a look have a look at what’s going on in the world. And this is what I really wanna talk about today, because being informed, doing your wider reading, understanding what issues are you know, relevant to our society, and then using those as a basis for your writing will make a massive difference in terms of not only the substance of what you’re writing about, but also the marks.

We’ll receive for what you write about, because teachers really wanna see that you have a lot of engagement with, you know, like, what’s relevant to us, what are we dealing with as a society? And there are so many things that, you know, we can talk about. And this is actually just such a great opportunity for you to have a look at an issue that interests you, something that engages you, you can, and you can have an opinion about it. Which is just, you know, very different to the style of writing where, you know, you’ve gotta analyze a text and what does that compose and wanna say, what, what is their message? And that’s totally fine, that’s great as well. But, you know, we also wanna hear your views and what’s your voice, and in order to create that, you need to do some wide reading, , right?

So I always recommend subscriptions to, you know, news media you know, I’ve got a couple of those. And, and that kind of also is good because it gives you a bit more of a a view from different perspectives. Remember what, you know, whoever’s creating or writing particular news could be influenced by who’s funding that . So there are particular media corporations that will be funding particular newspapers and, and media and so forth. But either way, you know, there are documentaries, like there’s so many places that you can look to and you won’t even realize you’ll be exposed to so many of these, even just in your day to day life. So just as a, you know, a couple of examples off the top of my head, you know, looking at the idea of social media and what impact is that having on relationships and the way people interact with each other, and you know, the way that you could discuss like, the benefits of that.

Like, look at all, you know, look at what we can see as a result of you know, the unregulated in some ways. What’s the idea anyway? You know, ability for people to put news and, and, and expose things online. So a really good example of that is you know, last year with, with the horrific murder of George Floyd and the fact that that was captured by somebody on a on phone and then uploaded for, you know, so many, you know, millions of people to see and for that to be exposed. So, you know, that sort of you know, you can sort of see the benefit of exposing these things to kind of help to bring justice. And then on the other hand and then this is where things like discursive pieces could come into it having a look at, you know, the social isolation that could potentially be caused through the use of things like, you know, the overuse of things like social media and having, you know, your phone on you all the time and a computer out and all of these things.

So that’s just one example of something that you would absolutely be experiencing in your own life. And, you know, at that point it’s really good, you know, if you did wanna choose to do a piece on that. So let’s say you didn’t imaginative you could, you could start with an individual who is, you know, isolated in a room. So how could you use descriptive language to create that isolation, et cetera. And, you know, have something play out from there. Or, you know, if you’re doing a discursive, you could look at, you know, discussing both sides is argument, and this is where your research will come in really handy. So bringing in things like statistics and you know, quotes from experts and, you know, and just in general, like using your own sort of written techniques. So like lots of, you know, asking questions with discursive writing and doing things like using anaphora.

So like, you know if you were you know, maybe raising a, a couple of repeated questions like, how do we know if this is safe? How do we know if this is benefiting us? How can we find this out? So you can see the use of a, with the repetition of those phrases, how do we sort of raises that idea of there’s like such an uncertainty in that particular issue about, you know, what the consequences of a lot of these things are. And, you know, it’s different even from particular age groups. So they’ll be looking at this issue for teens, they’ll be, you know, oh, what age should, you know, minors and infants be, you know, exposed to these types of media and, and so on, And what are the potential pros and cons of that? And oh, there’s so many things.

So that’s just like that one issue. But, you know, a lot of things topical at the moment you know, gender looking at you know, like women in parliament and, and the injustices and the allegations that have been made. You know, and then sort of bringing, like with of course the intention being to bring equality and to, you know, have there be a, a fair place for, you know, people to be represented and not be exposed to harm or be discredited based on, you know, gender or race or you know, sexual identity or any of these things. So, you know that’s another one that’s really, really topical, but really at any point in time you open up the news and there’s so much available. So what I just really want you to take away from this is the importance of doing wide reading.

Even just quick articles here and there. Like it doesn’t need to be, you know, extended novels and things, although that’s great too. You know, but like, just being informed. And you know, like starting to think about what your opinion is towards these things. So, you know, you, you could have a particular topic where you would be writing a persuasive because you just feel really strongly about the fact that, you know, this should be something should be the case. Always think that, you know, maybe doing something environmental could be a really good way to do a persuasive, because I think it’s, it’s very clear at this point that, you know, really need to be working towards you know, living in much more harmony with the environment because not doing so is gonna have these really awful ramifications, many of which we’ve already seen and are currently experiencing.

So that could be a really good idea for persuasive, whereas a discursive, I suppose I gave you that example of the you know, the, the social media thing and then you know, and then for imaginative you could kind of pick any one of these issues. So, you know and doing that research in that wider reading, even if you’re doing an imaginative piece, it still makes a huge difference because your ability to be able to understand the issue in depth and write authentically about it will be greatly heightened by the fact that you are knowledgeable about it. And that’s really what teachers wanna say. And the more you read the more you understand, the better informed you are and you know, the more you can kind of also make an impact on the things that are important to you. And, you know, like if you feel passionately about something, you can start implementing it in your current environment. There’s no reason for why you can’t start making these changes now. You don’t need to wait till after school to do any of these things. So, you know, I really just wanna encourage you, like, keep your minds open, keep those conversations going, stay informed, do that reading, and it will really make a big difference when it comes time for you to just be given, you know, a topic or a, a stimulus or something and you’ve gotta come up with something.