All About English Creative Writing

[The Alternative Story]

[quote]Hi TAS


Appreciate if you could help to explain the grammar rules for the following questions taken from one of the P3 2009 exam papers.

1. Benson sees his father only once a month. He wishes his father ___ in Singapore instead of HongKong.

(1) work
(2) works
(3) worked
(4) working[/quote]Hi Rocklee,

For this question, the answer is (2). The reason being
that the whole question is phrased in the present tense.
So the answer will be in the present tense form. The
singular form 'lives' is also used as the emphasis is on
'his father'.

Some children might get confuse and think this is a
verb-noun-verb situation.

Eg of verb-noun-verb(v-n-v):

1) I saw(v) him(n) cry(v)
OR I saw (v) him(n) crying(v)

2) I heard(v) her(n) scream(v)
OR I saw(v) her(n) screaming(v)

In a verb-noun-verb situation, the second verb is always
either in the root form (no 's', no past tense, no 'ing')
or in the continuous form (ing).

For v-n-v, they tend to be action-based
(eg: saw her scream) but for this case, it is a desire-based
(eg: wishes he was still alive).

Hence for this example, the focus is on 'his father' and not
the v-n-v form.
[quote]2. The children saw a man _______ a bottle of drink out of the shop without paying just now.

(1) take
(2) takes
(3) took
(4) taken[/quote]The answer is (1). This is an example of a v-n-v form of
question, hence the second verb is in the root form.
[quote]On top of the above, please advise which is correct for the following:

I heard him cry in the room. OR
I heard him crying in the room.[/quote]This is another example of a v-n-v format. Both answers are
acceptable. The difference is this:

- heard him cry (implies a sudden cry, you heard a cry come from
the boy)
- heard him crying (you heard a bout of continuous
crying)

There are examples where only the root form is allowed:
- made him cry (correct)
- made him crying (wrong)

You can hear a boy crying for a while but 'make' implies
a one time action of making a person cry.
So it cannot be 'make him crying'.
[quote]Many thanks in advance.
Rocklee[/quote]No problem, hope this helps.

TAS

[The Alternative Story]

notfreemom:

Hi Tas,

I am staying at east too. Would like to send my son in P1 for the Cwc. Please let me know if there is a place for him.
Thanks.

Hi notfreemom,

Are you asking about classes that are just solely on creative writing
or ones that combine creative writing and paper 2 components
(grammar, vocab, compre etc)?

TAS

[The Alternative Story]

sleepy:

I thought Tampines is a good location? Education hub there.
British council, Berries, MPM, Tony buzan, LCentral all located in Tampines.

Can share background of your teachers? Are they ex-teachers? Minimum qualifications and how many years of teaching experience?

Can't help but noticed your rapid expansion - from Yishun to Bukit Timah to now possible East branch... can maintain teachers' quality :scratchhead:

Hi sleepy,

We did think of that but it is a bit further East, we prefer a
place that is a bit more centralized or in the Marine Parade
area

Sure we will share about the background of the teachers:

they are not ex-teachers (only the founder is)
reason being that we look for 3 key things in the teachers:
- Good content knowledge
- Confident and able to hold a class's attention
- Passion for teaching and excited about teaching children

We find that while ex-teachers are good, not all might
have the quality of being passionate. There is no one style of
teaching that is better or worse. This is just our style that we
have developed and hence we look for teachers that
have these qualities.

If you would like to find out more, you could contact us but in
short, we believe that the intangibles are as important as
the tangibles.

Tangibles: Materials and Content knowledge

Intangibles:

1) Teachers must have a passion for teaching and
for whatever subject they are teaching. For writing, we want
the teachers to love reading and writing. Because we feel
that for students to write well, they must not only learn
the techniques but be able to catch the love for writing and
reading. It is hard to 'transfer' that passion if the teacher
is a good one but only just good at imparting knowledge.

2) The atmosphere in the class is also important.
Of course there must be discipline, but there must also be
a 'excitement' in the air where the students are
motivated to want to do the work, to want to learn.

Most of the teachers are either university graduates or
studying in the university presently. There are a few
who might be from the polytechnics but these are chosen
for their strong foundation in a particular subject.

Most of the teachers have been to schools to teach for
our enrichment programmes.
We have doing less work in schools now as we are focusing
on the centres but most of them have at one point in time
done workshops or programmes in the schools.

We are able to expand because previously we were doing work
in schools before we started the first centre and so have
trained a number of teachers to teach. The teachers are also
continually assessed and they go through regular trainings before
they teach a class.

All of them start off as assistant teachers before they take on
a class by themselves.

TAS

[rocklee]

[/quote]No problem, hope this helps.[quote]

Hi TAS

Thank you very much for your advice. It becomes easier to explain to my kid now. Really appreciate you generous sharing in this forum.

Regards
Rocklee[/quote]

[ccgoh]

Hi TAS,


Do you plan to open classes for pre-school children. My girl is in K1 this year.

I also heard from my friend that her kid who is in K2 is joining an existing P1 class because she is fast for her age, if the K1 is also of that std, is there a possibility you can accept? We will send for assessment and all.

[notfreemom]

[b]Are you asking about classes that are just solely on creative writing

or ones that combine creative writing and paper 2 components
(grammar, vocab, compre etc)?

TAS[/quote]

I think I prefer ones tha combine creative writing and paper 2 components.
Thanks.

[littlewoman]

Hi TAS,


I like the way my dd writes in the class she attended, even though it is
a short holiday programme, I can see improvement. She told me she is
also very happy in class.

However, we do not stay near either Bukit Timah or the Yishun branch,
for the school term, it is a bit hard to ferry her to and fro. Will you come
up with a creative writing assessment book for us to guide at home till
she can join you for nov/dec holiday programme?

[sunshinelove]

Hi TAS,


I am helping my colleague to inquire, she has 2 girls in your centre and heard about the book where their writing will be published, she wants to know more about it (as in is it part of a storybook, assessment book, guide book?) They are very excited about it and keep telling her, as she is too busy to come down to ask more, she asked me to help her, knowing that
I follow your threads here. Could you tell me more?

[The Alternative Story]

rocklee:

Hi TAS

Thank you very much for your advice. It becomes easier to explain to my kid now. Really appreciate you generous sharing in this forum.

Regards
Rocklee

Hi Rocklee,

No problem

TAS

[The Alternative Story]

ccgoh:

Hi TAS,


Do you plan to open classes for pre-school children. My girl is in K1 this year.

I also heard from my friend that her kid who is in K2 is joining an existing P1 class because she is fast for her age, if the K1 is also of that std, is there a possibility you can accept? We will send for assessment and all.

Hi ccgoh,

For K1, we will also assess. If she or he is of a similar ability to
the P1 class, then we would take in that K1.

TAS