This resource has numerous examples of language features for you to teach your students how to both recognise the writer’s craft, and use them in their own writing. Here is a sample: Juxtaposition: two things that are put close together in order to emphasise the difference between them. • “Give us a pound, mister,” said the beggar, scrolling through the internet on his phone. • The mother, tortured with pain, now smiled beatifically, while the baby, newly released, screamed incessantly. • While the battle raged, the generals sat behind the front lines, drinking beers and stuffing three course meals. Repetition: repeating a word, phrase, or idea. This can be done to emphasise, to create a rhythm or tone, or to reveal a contrast or comparison. Register: In linguistics, a register is a variety of a language used for a particular purpose or in a particular setting. What words give this the register of colloquial, American teenage language? “(Candace runs out to the backyard, she stares in shock upon seeing the rollercoaster, along with horror music) Candace: Phineas, what is this?! Phineas: Do you like it? Candace: Ooh, I’m gonna tell Mom, and when she sees what you’re doing, you are going down. (runs off) Down! Down! Down! D-O-W-N, down!” Which words deal with the idea of writing a novel? “In my mind, I continually entertain myself with fragments of narrative, dialogue and plot twists but as soon as I’m in front of a blank page, they evaporate. I feel stuck. Sometimes I think I should give up, but I have convinced myself that if I can find a way to write more freely and suppress my inner critic, I could finally finish that first draft.”

This is a really in depth analysis of Gerald, and you will see him differently after you have read it. Your students will have a completely new perspective. Here is an extract to show you what I mean: Gerald’s Affair with Daisy Renton Although Sheila is the first to expose Gerald’s affair at the start, the language they both use strongly hints that she will forgive him after breaking off the engagement and that, after the end of the play, they will marry. Gerald’s first impulse is to lie, because Priestley wants to present all capitalists as hypocrites. He denies knowing any “Eva Smith”. Sheila points out that she knows he is simply using his intelligence to maintain a veneer of honesty, as he knew her as “Daisy Renton”. This is called sophistry – using clever arguments which appear true but which the speaker knows to be false. Although Sheila insists on the truth, her language is also a kind of sophistry. She uses euphemism. Instead of asking for how long he had sex with Daisy, she only insists he “knew her very well”. This is important, as while she is at her most angry now, her own language minimises what he has done. This will make it much easier for her to forgive him in the future. Clever as he is, Gerald picks up on this weakness in her resolve, calling her “darling” in order to manipulate her. He immediately asks her to keep the affair secret from The Inspector. This might seem astonishingly arrogant. However, Priestley is again showing the corruption of the patriarchy. He expects a woman to protect him even at the expense of her own happiness, in return for the financial security and status that marriage to him will offer her.

Dickens is a master of his craft, but by God, you can tell he was paid by the word, can’t you? Never was a man so in love with a sentence, loaded with clauses, garnished with phrases and then, to add to the confusion, the main clause tagged on at the end. What 16 year old wouldn’t struggle? I’ve abridged this great novel down to 20,000 words, from 27,000. That’s a quarter less time to read it, and a quarter more time to teach the content. Better than that, it actually makes for a more entertaining read. The conversation feels much more natural, and has some real pace. You can easily have your students taking parts. And of course, none of the essential quotations are left out! Here is a sample:

Teach your students how to use the indicative content to write their revision essay. Then show them how to refine this to a grade 9 essay which can be done under exam conditions. Next teach them from the model. Show exactly how it meets all the exam criteria for AQA and Edexcel. Here is an extract:

What does the examiner’s report have to tell us about teaching Romeo and Juliet? Learn how to write about more than one interpretation for the top grades. Take opposing views about the role of the Friar in bringing peace to Verona, but upsetting the social order. About Romeo and Juliet’s love representing the passion of the individual, or the error of challenging social conventions. Relate their marriage to the potential tragedy of Shakespeare’s marriage to Ann Hathaway. Or alternatively, understand the play as a celebration of his own marriage in contrast to social conventions of Verona and Shakespeare’s audience. Find alternative perspectives on the Nurse, so that she is both hero and villain. See how a contemporary audience might well have seen Capulet as a model father. Follow the link to my video to see how to use the presentation to teach your students.

What if you could teach your students 3 key skills which would make their essays worth grades 7-9? What if you could show your students 7 mistakes students make, which reduce their marks? And then, what would happen if your students learned to correct those mistakes? Then they would get grades 7, 8 and 9. A poll of over 600 students on my YouTube channel shows that 79% of students think my resources earned them at least one extra grade, and 38% think that they went up by at least two grades. You can find the video which teaches this presentation on Mr Salles Teaches English so that your students can also dramatically improve their grade.

How do you get a student who is packing their description and narrative with too many adjectives and adverbs to pick them carefully. How do you help them choose when to speed action up, and when to slow it down? Sometimes this feels as though we have to get them to unlearn what we have taught them! It’s hard. But this lesson will help you do that quickly, and in a way your students will understand. A video goes with it, so you can see how I teach it. You also get a copy of the all the writing in Word, so it is easy to edit and print off. It gives the original version, and then the improved version. Also included is the rest of the story, which you an get your students to edit and rewrite in response to your teaching.

This resource includes a typically uninspiring picture. How to plan. How to write a description which lasts only a few seconds, so does not turn in to a narrative. How to select an interesting viewpoint. A model answer, around 500 words long. The marking criteria. An explanation as to why it is grade 9.

This very focused PPT takes an extract from Bleak House to show you 7 secrets of Dickens' description, including how to use contrast, why metaphor and personification trump metaphor, the power of listing and the subtlety of alliterative sound and rhythm. When we look at marking criteria we tend to befuddle the students with lists of descriptive techniques. Notice that listing, rhythm and contrast probably don't make it onto most teachers' lists, but these are the most powerful ways of improving their description. The kind of all writing techniques, or indeed the queen, is the use of the right verb. Dickens masters that too. The resource will also be linked to a video you can use to teach this, or plan your teaching from. Also included is the extract from Bleak House in Word.

Not only do you get a great story to teach from, but it is 630 words long, so your students can write the same amount in the exam. Better than that, you can teach how to use the picture as a springboard to writing the story, without them stressing. Crucially, you can teach your students to write a story, under exam pressure, WITHOUT HAVING TO PLAN! The most helpful part is the free video which comes with it, to show you lots of ways of teaching the story to your class. There are 7 useful tips in the video: What’s holding you back in your writing? A fascinating fact about learning to swim and learning to drive, which will help you become a writer! A picture. A story and description. How an expert thinks as they write, which will help you think like an expert. How to have fun in the exam. No, I really mean it! And obviously, how to write a brilliant description or story which will get you full marks (unless you can’t punctuate, but that is another video). As you will see from the extract below, it is particulary useful for teaching boys! “Obviously, the cooler part of my brain, the mixed martial art aficionado part, registered that I was about to get my ticket punched, so obviously I kept on ducking. Unfortunately, as you’ve seen by now, this wasn’t the most active part of my brain and so, like South West Trains, it had arrived a little late, and bam, there it was: fist, face – fiddlesticks.” Although it is in Word, I’ve spaced the paragraphs and font so that it will fill your screen a paragraph at a time, like a PPT.

Here is the beginning: Princess Mathilde and Cupid’s Arrow Mathilde knew she looked amazing. But then it was her duty as a princess. She loved being the centre of attention, loved dressing up: the chiffon and silk; the velvet, the fun of display. She was a girl, wasn’t she? She was sixteen. Her father, the warrior king, McArthur Glen the Great, was a wonderful father, she had to admit, but he was still first and foremost a king. And a king is bound by tradition, much the same as a princess. So, today was Suitor Day, when the 16-year-old princess must begin the long and frustrating selection of a husband. They would compete for her in an archery contest. Problem number one: she was beautiful, but Mathilde didn’t want a husband. Problem number two: the suitors on offer, even if she had been in the market to buy, wouldn’t have made her part with a bag of farthings, let alone gold. Jacob the Just from the McDuff clan was ‘duff’ by name and nature, and ‘Just’ about had a brain, was skinny and ‘just’ barely male.

This PPT is linked to 10 videos on my YouTube channel, Mr Salles Teaches English, so you can see how it works. The idea is that students learn exactly how to analyse an extract, and how to link it to the rest of the novella. Moreover, the quotations analysed and the links made will fit any extract question from any other of the 9 chapters.

This resource teaches students how to take even ordinary people they know and shape a story round them. Teach 7 techniques which guarantee a good story. It shows them how to structure what they know so that it has a beginning, a middle and an end. It illustrates how to craft the ending with a twist. It provides the full short story, as well as questions to help students realise how it is put together, so that they can plan and write their own. The story is also provided in Word form, so you can adapt it for your class, or annotate it with them, or print it for them.

Here’s the beginning. I hope you like it. Dear Bedroom, Two years after my mother died, I think of you. When did childhood end? Was it when I gave the eulogy, told the impossible, hilarious, tragic, extraordinary life she had? There were earlier endings. At five, my grandmother died, and I didn’t speak for a week. You remember me then, in the womb of your white walls, weeping, kicking against the sides, against the tides, against death. It’s been a long time, hasn’t it? Leaving Spain was another death – when dad left, and mum started dating the bank robber, and the dream of Disneyland died, our savings taking us only as far as Canada – right continent, wrong country. I didn’t say goodbye, or send you a postcard from the border, leaving the sun and crossing into the snows. Nor a photograph, a snapshot of me ballooning to eleven stone: ten years old, and a giant snowball of a kid, out of place. Yes, that was a kind of ending, but really, I think the damage was already done, further back, when you still knew me.

Here is the beginning. I hope you like it. The Act of Killing The killings always happened in bright sunlight. The smell of burning hair brings the first killings straight back to me, and I am five again, thirsty in the hot sun – all of us at break time queuing at the well. No running water. Just down the hill, in a hollow, squatted an open shell of a building– whitewashed walls splashed with blood. Once a month, the snuffling pigs ambled up the path, to the pen. They gathered nonchalantly. Then the show started. First, a hook like a giant question mark was stabbed through a snout. The disbelieving pig was pulled, squealing in shock, and just as suddenly, three shirtless men lifted it. The hook fitted onto a rail above head height. Below, a bucket, for the blood. The screaming pig hung from its snout, legs kicking at the empty air.

This story is based on homophobia. My daughter is bisexual, and training to become a teacher. When I released this on video, I was astonished at the number of English teachers who assumed both characters in the story were dislikable, simply because they are both gay. It is also based on the Daphne Du Maurier extract from the 2017 AQA paper. It keeps exactly the same grammar and sentence structure and punctuation. This means that you can rerun all the 2017 questions using this text, to see if your students have learned anything from doing their mock. Here is the beginning. I hope you like it. Twitter Queen Over the face of her keyboard, Regina began a barrage of abuse, and that was usually the way she spent such a brilliant evening – because a Twitter account, and a poisonous tongue and a quiver of quips are just perfect for some social media trolling on a laptop. As she tweeted the world on the web, swigged her wine with one gulp and spat at her victims in 140 characters, Regina decided she could have sold her mother for a viral tweet, something vindictive and destructive and glorious. Regina gazed down at the screen; her fingers were buzzing and furious, the tweets whipping through the ether lacerated her victims with sarcasm and emojis, and their pathetic replies tweeting about this were drowned kittens. Her eyes were blazing hot, and she imagined the tips of her fingers and teeth could be sharpened with cold, mercilessly steel. There was an exponential trend of outraged followers – it seemed to be exploding out of every screen in the city – and each sought the same target, crying so softly, sobbing in her room. Regina laughed delightedly and shrieked at the 10 best tweets from her followers… she felt almost invincible. Inside her power crazed mind, the whole Internet of users across the planet seemed to worship her blank, airbrushed face.

Learn the 12 techniques my students used in getting grades 8 and 9 in the 2017 exams. Use these to show students what to do, rather than refer to wordy and ambiguous mark schemes. Use a PPT with highlighted paragraphs of the full essay, all coded with the 12 techniques. See which 3 skills are demanded of the best conclusion. Also included is the whole essay in Word.