Academic voice in essays
Personal voice and academic style are worth considering to challenge students to write more clearly and convincingly. It really does not take long to improve a student’s written voice to be more critical and academic. I want to be clear here that this can be achieved by any student regardless of year group or perceived ability. This can have a real impact both on the quality and precision of their thinking, their essays and ultimately their grade.
At the outset of tackling an essay remind students about their own ‘voice’. Highlighting the difference between the more informal versus an academic style is key. Two things I have taught immediately help to eliminate the informal voice. Firstly, students remove first person from their essays- those who find English challenging absolutely can do this if they are taught how. Most sentences starting, ‘I think Dickens’ or ‘I think Lady Macbeth’ can be edited to easily remove the first person and still make sense. Teachers can edit sentences live on the board to show students how to do it. Another bête noir is an analytical paragraph, which instead of embedding the quotation says, ‘This is shown when Dickens quotes’ or ‘seen in the quotation’. Writing quotes or quotation in this context is incorrect. Dickens does not quote himself in his own novel and writing ‘quotation’ before then writing the quotation actually makes no sense.
However, we also encounter another type of student who think they need to write in some impressive overblown style, and as a result we can get verbose essays which sound impressive but contain empty phrases or worse yet, waffle on and make no sense. These essays are self penalising. It is arguable that AO1 is in reality the key driver because it underpins everything. Students may have perceptive and sophisticated interpretations however if they do not convey them precisely and with a sharp focus on the question all the words in the world are a waste of time. It is worth looking at exemplars from your exam boards or ones you have from previous years which can highlight either a waffly or a cogent style and compare them. Then as a task students could make the ‘waffly’ version sharper.
Sentence starters or key words can be given to students to scaffold this process, which can be reduced as they get more adept at using them such as: evokes, conveys, effectively, positions the reader to, illuminates, challenges. Recently, twitter teachers have been great at sharing resources doing this. The more we model using these, the more any student of any age or ability will just pick them up. It’s just a word afterall.
Other very useful phrases to show a considered approach are tentative ones linked to the writer: perhaps, might, could have, which indicate a thoughtful, evaluative understanding eg ‘Perhaps Shakespeare positions the audience to admire Macbeth’s loyalty and bravery at the start to make his downfall seem greater’. Additionally, this tentative approach opens the door to alternative interpretations ‘Perhaps Duffy… on the other hand it could be argued…’ which can be a feature of a higher level essay.
Finally, ‘writing from the writer’ is key to show they understand the text is written as a construct to convey ideas. This is relevant for a good pass in Literature. Furthermore, in GCSE especially it can help them to discuss the writers concerns and themes, opening up AO3 for them. Really simple phrases which support this are those such as: the writer, Shakespeare presents, the writer positions the audience, perhaps the text challenges… These approaches can be useful in enabling students to achieve that more convincing, critical style in their essays.
Modelling the thinking behind What How Why sections would be an effective activity to complete as a class. You can demonstrate a paragraph before and after academic phrases and talk through what is different. This allows students to see the thinking behind the phrasing perhaps tweaking bits and tailoring them to what they particularly want to say. Students get to practise seeing the context in which ‘evokes’ works better than ‘challenges’ for example. Follow up tasks can be students having a go themselves (in pairs even) using and modifying sentence starts, which you can eventually fade out as they get more confident with their own academic voice.
