List of adverbs

In the last post I gave you a list of adjectives you could use to make your writing more interesting. In this post I'm going to give you a list of adverbs. Remember: adverbs are adjectives which are used only to describe verbs. 

EXAMPLE:

The girl ran quickly around the corner. In this sentence, 'ran' is the verb and 'quickly' is the adverb. 

I'm not quite sure why some of the words are clustered together on the left hand side - it didn't look like that when I laid it out in the template!

quietly          loudly             softly            quickly                speedily              rapidly

hurriedly           hastily              slowly               carefully             cautiously

thoughtfully          thoughtlessly              pedantically              gracefully

peacefully           sorrowfully               happily               gladly              horridly

grotesquely               viciously          nastily         cruelly         kindly           greedily              

famously              tragically            outrageously              mercifully             elegantly

bravely            anxiously             nervously            shyly             calmly           brightly

painfully             perfectly            recently            politely              occasionally

regularly           smoothly           roughly             suspiciously            thoughtfully

seriously             jokingly            selfishly           altruistically             basically

correctly             incorrectly             intentionally              unintentionally

purposefully            accidentally               easily              beautifully          magnificently

violently               aggressively

List of adjectives

Below is a list of adjectives you can use to use to make your writing more interesting. 

Tall   Short    Long       Thin     Twisted       Warped       Gnarled

Tropical       Hot         Dry           Arid           Barren     Beautiful

Stunning         Breath-taking          Dreamlike         Ethereal

Peaceful           Glowing          Shimmering           Twinkling

Towering           Looming         Imposing          Huge      Enormous

Colossal       Small        Tiny         Miniscule         Terrifying

Scary         Disconcerting        Unsettling         Old         Ancient

Crumbling          Decaying            Dilapidated        Archaic

Pristine          Shiny          New         Clean      Dirty      Disgusting

Horrible         Horrendous

GCSE overview

Hi,

I've had a few people asking about the English GCSE curriculum, so I thought I would use this forum to tell you a bit more about it. 

As some of you may know already, it is a brand new syllabus, so your son/daughter will be part of the very first cohort in the country to complete it. We will be following the Eduqas syllabus (which is part of WJEC). We have covered creative writing this half term, and over the next term and a half we will cover persuasive/transactional writing by focussing on formal and informal letters, reviews, articles, speeches, leaflets and reports. In the Summer term we will focus on reading comprehension, both of fiction and non-fiction texts. Below is an overview of the course; there is no controlled assessment so everything comes down to the two exam papers. 

Paper 1: ·         40% ·         1 hour, 45 minutes (plus extra time) ·         Fiction ·         Reading section: one extract to read and answer questions on ·         Writing section: one creative writing task

Paper 2: ·         60% ·         2 hours (plus extra time) ·         Non-fiction ·         Reading section: two extracts to read and answer questions on ·         Writing section: two persuasive/transactional writing tasks

You can find an example of the specimen exam paper here:

http://www.eduqas.co.uk/qualifications/english-language/gcse/

You need to scroll down and click on the ‘assessment materials’ tab, then click ‘view assessment materials’.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to email me via the school office. 

How to write dialogue

The basics of writing dialogue

Hopefully these guidelines will teach you everything you need to know about writing dialogue. Where the instructions mention arrows, you will only see boxes as the format got a bit messed up when I copied and pasted the document across!

1. Everything a character says should have speech marks either side of it.

EXAMPLE:

       

‘What is our mission?’ asked Mario.

‘How many times,’ said Luigi, ‘do we have to defeat Bowser in battle before he actually dies?’

It is up to you whether you want to use double (“) speech marks or single (‘) speech marks, but generally speaking, in England we use singles, whereas in America they use doubles.

YOUR TURN:

Have a go at putting speech marks around all the speech in the lines below:

If you jump up there you get an extra life, said Mario.

So what’s the name of this princess we’re supposed to be rescuing? asked Luigi.

Oh no, it’s Bowser! Mario exclaimed.

The funny thing is, said Luigi, I’ve never done any plumbing in my life!

You saved me! said Princess Peach. She was so happy to see them. If it wasn’t for you, I’d still be stuck in that tower.

It’s funny, said Mario, but I don’t think I’ve ever actually been to Italy. Me neither, Luigi replied.

2. When a new person starts speaking, you start a new line and indent it, but as the speech carries on, you do not indent.

EXAMPLE:

     ‘How are we going to get there?’ asked Mario.

        ‘I think we have to jump over that giant mushroom but it looks quite difficult,’ Luigi replied.

In this example, the long lines show where the paragraph should be indented, and the shorter line shows where it should just carry on.

YOUR TURN:

If you are doing this on a computer, have a go at using the tab key to indent the speech in the correct places below. If you are doing this on paper, draw arrows to show where the indentations should go. Either way, you will also need to add speech marks.

I don’t know if I can jump that high, said Mario.

My head hurts from all the blocks I’ve been headbutting, Mario complained.

Where’s the castle? Luigi asked. I think it’s just past that giant pool of fire, Mario replied.

‘You’ll never guess who I saw the other day, said Luigi. Who? asked Mario. Only that Sonic the Hedgehog, Luigi told him.

Do you ever get bored of this? Luigi asked. Bored of what? Mario replied. You know, said Luigi, all this running around and jumping. Erm, said Mario as he thought about this, not really, to be honest.

3. Most of the time, a spoken sentence will end with a comma, followed by the closing speech mark, then an explanation of who is speaking, followed by a full stop. Sometimes, the character will then start a new sentence, which will need to start with a capital letter.

EXAMPLE:

     ‘Let’s jump up onto that ledge to get a better look,’ said Mario. ‘From up there, we should be able to see.’

The arrows show the comma, the closing speech mark and the full stop.

YOUR TURN:

Have a go at adding commas, speech marks and full stops to the following sentences. You will also need to indent or draw arrows where appropriate.

I don’t know where to go next said Mario

I think we have to jump across that ravine replied Luigi

Ha ha ha! I’ve got you now exclaimed Bowser There’s no escape this time

Oh no said Mario he’s got us now. There’s no escape this time

He’s got us now said Luigi

I do hope those brave plumbers can rescue me said Princess Peach

4. Sometimes you will want to let the reader know who is speaking in the middle of a long sentence, so as not to keep them hanging. It is okay to break up a spoken sentence to do this.

EXAMPLE:

        ‘I think it’s fire,’ said Mario, ‘but I can’t be sure.’

The top arrows show where the second set of speech marks should go. The first bottom arrow shows where a comma should go and the second bottom arrow shows where a full stop should go.

YOUR TURN:

Have a go at adding commas, speech marks and full stops to the sentences below. You will also need to indent or add arrows to show where indentations should be.

I know a great restaurant said Mario where they serve enormous bowls of pasta

I don’t understand said Luigi why we have to rescue this princess

It does seem a little strange said Mario that we should go to so much effort to rescue her when we don’t even know anything about her

When all this is over said Luigi can we go and live on a beach somewhere great idea said Mario

Homework, 12th October

This week I would like you to complete the activities on the worksheet in your folder. They involve reading an extract from the first Harry Potter book and then looking at how speech marks are used. 

Homework, October 5th, 2015

This week I would like you to read the following short story, which I can publish on here because I wrote it! The purpose of this is to get you thinking about how short stories are structured. I would then like you to fill in the story planning sheet which I gave you (I tried to copy and paste it here but the format got messed up). Basically, you have to write down:

1. The title

2. Who the protagonist(s)  and antagonist(s) are

3. Whether it is in the first or third person

4. Whether it is in the past or present tense

5. What the setting is

6. What happens in the beginning, middle and end

The Day the School Caught Fire

When I wished something interesting would happen at school, a fire wasn’t quite what I had in mind, but it certainly did give us a break from boring lessons. Now, you’re probably worried that people were hurt – maybe even killed – in the fire, but I can assure you that no children or animals were hurt in the making of this story.

                It all started during my morning Maths lesson. Mr Pinel was going on and on about triangles, as he always does, wearing that stupid brown jacket that he always wears, with his tangled hair just kind of sitting on top of his head like a pile of straw. Sometimes I wondered if he practiced making my life miserable, or if it was something that just came naturally to him. While he droned on, I stared out of the window, thinking about whether or not I had any sympathy for Walter White (that will only make sense if you’ve seen Breaking Bad), when I heard Boris Cooper shouting out of an upstairs window from the other side of the playground.

                ‘Fire, fire!!!’ he yelled.

                A few seconds later, the loud, shrill sound of the fire alarm came blaring out of the red box on the wall and pierced our ears, as if a team of medieval archers was firing arrows us.

                ‘Okay everyone, try and remain calm,’ Mr Pinel said as we all ran around screaming.

                After a few chaotic seconds, something resembling a sense of order fell over the room, and we made our way out towards the playground.

                ‘I don’t know why we have to stand in the playground,’ said Rita Buchanan as we made our way through the corridor.

                ‘Quiet!’ Mr Pinel bellowed.

                ‘I mean,’ she continued in a whisper, ‘in a way, it’s kind of the worst place you could be, because I heard that when glass gets hot it breaks and flies outwards, which means if you’re standing in the middle of the playground, you’re going to get covered in broken glass!’

                ‘That’s rubbish,’ said Tim Masterson.

                Before Rita could snap back with a retort, which I knew she would because she hated people disagreeing with her, even over the tiniest thing, Mr Mastrodomenico, the headmaster, appeared ahead of us. He didn’t say anything; he didn’t need to. Everyone was terrified of him and so stopped talking immediately. It helped that he was the headmaster, obviously, but it was more than that with him: everything about him was scary: his face, his eyes … even his name was terrifying, although that might have been because no-one knew how to pronounce it.          

                We spent a good ten minutes standing out in the playground while various teachers hurried around talking to each other in hushed tones, until eventually the glorious news came: we were being sent home. I felt a wave of euphoria rush through me as the news was delivered. It was like I’d won the lottery or something. I probably should have been more worried about the possibility of people being burnt, but I’m a teenager and teenagers just don’t always think about these things. We’re kind of selfish like that. As we filed out of the school through the main gates, the sound of fire engine sirens wailed through the air, getting louder as the red beasts got closer.

I spent the rest of the day at Gordon Sumner’s house playing X Box, kicking a football around and watching episodes of Walking Dead on his mum’s Netflix account. It might be a bit of an exaggeration to say it was the best day ever, but it was pretty close.

                The funny thing about all of this is that the fire, apparently, wasn’t actually that bad. In fact, there wasn’t even really a need to call the fire brigade; all that had happened, Paul Hewson told me the next day, was that someone had knocked over a Bunsen burner during a science lesson and the teacher, Ms Howard, had panicked like she always does over the tiniest thing. Whatever, I don’t really care – the important thing is that no-one was hurt and we all got to chillax for the afternoon.