“The National Curriculum Conditions Children To Write Badly”
Writing well is not about using long words, says Cecilia Busby…
I often visit primary classrooms as a children’s author, promoting writing and reading. There’s a phrase I have heard many times over during those visits: “Can you think of another, more interesting word you might use there?”
In itself it’s an innocent enough nudge towards widening children’s vocabulary, but it has become, in combination with pressure to get higher SAT scores and ‘improve’ children’s NC levels, a symptom of the way children’s writing has been and is being distorted by rigid, tick-box assessment.
I’d like to see the back of it, along with SATs and the NC assessment criteria for writing, which are frankly not fit for purpose. As far as I can see, they encourage both children and teachers to overvalue long words and complex structures at the expense of clear, fluent and thoughtful writing.
I first became aware of this when I was told by a teacher that ‘big’ was a ‘banned’ word in his Year 6 classroom. Children were simply not allowed to use it. They had to think of a ‘more interesting’ alternative. Pupils who described an object as ‘enormous’ or ‘gigantic’ or ‘huge’ got a pat on the back, while those who had committed the crime of describing something in their writing as ‘big’ were asked to reconsider.
Why? Not because in that particular piece of writing, or for that particular object, ‘enormous’ was a better, more accurate description. Not because ‘big’ had been used once and repetition was not the intention. Simply on the basis that, whatever the circumstances, ‘enormous’ would always be a ‘better’, more valuable word than ‘big’.
But here’s the thing. Writing is not like Scrabble. ‘Enormous’ should not be considered something that gets you a triple word score while ‘big’ only gets you a single. ‘Enormous’ is an exaggerated adjective that should be handled with care – used when you really want to make a splash, want to set a certain tone, have a particular image in mind. It’s a spice, not a staple.
The same thing applies to the use of adverbs, adverbial phrases, connectives, complex sentences structures and subordinate clauses. They all have their place, and it’s true that more confident and fluent writers use them more often than less confident, younger writers. But shoehorning them in wherever you can to show that you have ‘reached’ a certain level does not make for good writing.
Let me give you an example: ‘Despite the gloomy grey sky and howling wind hurtling down the winding narrow street, the hunched up wrinkled figure of the octogenarian man strode thoughtfully past, whilst Sally flicked her red curly hair and pouted at her kind, generous friend. “He’s mad!” she screeched sarcastically; Bridget bobbed her head like a seagull and laughed loudly.’
Despite the fact that this is obviously (I hope) an offence against the English language, it would tick a considerable number of boxes on the National Curriculum assessment criteria: namely, ‘fronted adverbials’, ‘varied’ and ‘ambitious’ vocabulary, subordinate clauses, a semi-colon, a ‘wide range of subordinating connectives’, ‘a range of verb forms’ and use of similes. But it’s over-flowery and painfully crammed with adjective and adverbs that don’t always make sense.
Sadly, I have seen writers at Key Stage 2 and in secondary school produce these kinds of sentences because they have picked up the idea that the more long words you cram into your writing, the better. They ask themselves, ‘can you think of a more interesting way of saying that?’ They have been conditioned by the National Curriculum and SATs to write… badly.
I’m not blaming teachers at all. They are under immense pressure to produce measurable improvements in their pupils’ writing in the terms set out by the National Curriculum. It’s no surprise that they nudge their pupils towards the kinds of ‘improvements’ that will get them a higher level in assessments. Many of them are perfectly aware of the awful affect this has on writing fluency, and when some fellow authors and I recently wrote a joint letter to the Department of Education to make this point, many of them emailed me to voice their support. But in the absence of any shift in National Curriculum guidelines, I wonder if we need to start making pupils themselves aware that there is ‘good writing’, and there is ‘assessment writing’ – and the two are not necessarily the same thing.
