What the resource Includes: 5 Steps; Just tell me what to do. Model answer 444 words Model answer 550 words Model answer annotated for descriptive techniques What do I have to do to get 100%? How to be original: Breaking the Vase How to adapt the description to a series of photographs in the exam: Here’s how mine might start if the photograph were of a train. Or imagine it was the park. Or, the ultimate vase breaking, you can simply have it as the photo in the room. Imagine a photo of a road. What does the examiner really want? 21 ways to look at Descriptive Techniques and Interesting Writing (More Than Just SOAPAIMS)

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:

This powerpoint covers comprehensive themes: Ambition, Masculinity and Cruelty, The Divine Right of Kings, Tyranny, The Psychology of Guilt, Fate, Prophecy and Free Will, Violence, and The Ambiguity of Reality. There are a range of quotations for each theme, from different characters’ perspectives. Each slide has engaging images which should help to make your teaching memorable. An in depth approach to each slide is also available in my free videos on YouTube. You can find over 600 useful videos at Or follow the link to the precise video on Macbeth’s themes.

This resource is a copy of the student essay, done under timed conditions. They will learn more from this if you give it to them to edit and improve, so that it is 1. a perfect story. 2. a perfect description, which does not become a narrative. There is a powerpoint to teach the 12 techniques which make it a top answer.

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.

How to write an article. This shows students how to move from grades 5 to 6, 6 to 7, 7 to 8 and 9. It also teaches 10 techniques that will get students grades 7 and above: Start each sentence with a different word Write about the future Not only…but Show me…show me Pair your verbs for emphasis Extend your simile or metaphor Anecdote The contrasting power of ‘but’ Humorous comparison Go to town on triplets. More anecdotes. Load your sentences with techniques which fit

Teach from part of a sample answer. Go through the 9 skills that students need for a grade 5. Then teach the same skills to grade 6 using the same essay, with an extra one - skill 10 which tips the balance between grades 5 and 6. Finally, exemplify a crucial tactic to approaching the question which makes grades 5 and 6 so much easier to get. Should students start with the extract or the whole text? There really is a right answer!

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.

All the themes of Jekyll and Hyde, with precise quotations to teach them. A 42 minute video showing you what to teach if you want it. Great to set for homework. A beautifully presented PowerPoint which you can teach from or print off as revision cards for your class. As always, the presentation links to my videos on Mr Salles Teaches English, so you can get even more tips on how to teach from it. Includes themes of women and femininity, duality, hypocrisy, repression, violence, duality, friendship, appearances, the house as a metaphor, science and evolution, and Christianity, curiosity, drug taking…

This is a comprehensive resource to teach your students how to get 100% in all aspects of the question. It teaches 11 different skills for the question: 1.Highlight the key words in the question which tell you what to look for 2.Highlight the margin of the part of the text you are told to look at 3.Find quotations as you read 4.Name a descriptive or narrative technique for each quotation you use (These will always be about imagery – simile, metaphor, personification, alliteration – and then perhaps onomatopoeia, sibilance, synesthesia, assonance, pathetic fallacy) 5.Refer to individual words in the quotation 6.Name their parts of speech – verb, adverb, noun, adjective 7.Find a long complex sentence, especially one with listed descriptions 8.Comment on the effect of contrast or juxtaposition, which will be in any description 9.Relate these quotations to the writer’s purpose, to discuss their effects 10.Use tentative language, like ‘perhaps’ to suggest your interpretation of the effect or purpose 11.Do not write in PEE paragraphs, but sentences which include embedded quotations It contains several models of how to write about complex sentences, with several practice paragraphs from Kipling, Conrad and Dickens for your students to practise on. It shows students how to model their own writing on that of other writers, using Brighton Rock. Students get to see why knowing parts of speech is so important to developing their own skills as writers. This then makes the job of writing about the effect of language features so much more easy and explicit for them. If you want to try without buying, all the PowerPoint is covered in a video at Mr Salles Teaches English, which you can find here: http://bit.ly/Question2Paper1 This PowerPoint is taken directly from The Mr Salles Guide to 100% in AQA English Language GCSE, which you can sample here: http://amzn.to/2phxxaS

What this resource includes: Mnemonic to remember rhetorical, persuasive techniques: MAD FATHERS CROCH How to plan an answer 9 skills necessary in a top answer The mark scheme explained Model answer, grade 6 Model answer, grade 9 Model answer, annotated and explained Why exam topics will never be interesting Sample topics and question Here is the beginning of the model text: Annotated 100% Model: Writing to Inform Every actor wants to be Tom Cruise, and every actress longs to be Jenifer Lawrence. So why settle for Danny Dyer and Letitia Dean? 1. Contrasting pair 2. Rhetorical question 3. Alliteration You wouldn’t, and you shouldn’t. It’s exactly the same thing with revision guides. Yes, they come with pretty pictures, and jokes, and everything is chunk sized so that it fits a single page. Emotive language Repetition Triplets Creating an enemy But do they push you, pull you, and propel you to get a grade 8 or 9? Alliteration Contrast Triplet You’ve spotted that’s a rhetorical question, but do you know the other 14 rhetorical devices? Direct address Contrasting pair Rhetorical question Mr Salles won’t just list them: by the time you finish his guide, you will know them by heart. Fact. Contrasting pair Direct address Opinion Mr Salles believes that all students can ace the English language exam; that every student can learn from beyond grade 9 answers that are properly explained; that every student can remember if they are shown how. Emotive language Triplet Repetition

Propel students to top grades in their full understanding of the context of this poem. It is propaganda, we know. But teaching the rhyme scheme and dactyl metre reveals a surprising alternative, that Tennyson is horrified at the senseless slaughter of the soldiers. Students who understand ‘form and structure’ achieve at least grade 7. A video also explains everything, so your students can follow up the lesson with homework, or can use it as flipped learning before you teach the poem.

Every to grade idea you’ll ever need. Boost students’ grades, because top level analysis is just knowing stuff. Understand interpretations you’ve not met before and help your students stand out from the crowd.

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.