All About English Creative Writing

[Joy]

chiefkiasu


Thanks for your pointers on creative writing.

Just hope to hear some adv from you on this…

Send my girl to a creative writing course lately.She is one person that can write, but lack details type , so tend to loose marks on those area.

In this writing class, teacher will give her structure with detials for a piece of compo, and phrases.So, she merely connect and there goes her creative writing…I think that is not right.Its true that it has guided her on the flow of compo, but her writing style is totally gone…Do you think there is a way that I can help her , with the proper structure given by the class?

In sum,that is how can I use the structure as a guide and yet able to encourage her to write with her own style…instead of filling up the blank and finished a creative writing…thanks

[yithz]

[Moderator's note: Topics merged.]


Hi All

Does any one have any tips to share on how to get their primary schooler started on developing Creative writing skills? Understand that they have to start writing simple \"composition\" during lower primary?

Ideally - would like to guide him myself without sending him for any classes.

Any suggestions/tips (websites, reference material, books etc) would be most helpful

Thanks!
Yithz

[ChiefKiasu]

yithz:

...Does any one have any tips to share on how to get their primary schooler started on developing Creative writing skills? ...

Much has been said earlier in this thread. Have you checked it out yet?

[Working_Kiasu_Mum]

I have actually send in appl for my boy in learning lab with his results, they called me and said that there is an eng class available for him (i did not send him for any eng enrichment at all in P1). I was contemplating to put him in, but it was a little too ex for me. He is spending me around 600+ a month with other enrichment, so I forgo learning lab and decides to teach myself


I came across this assessment book in popular on zoom in vocab for creative writing from casco. I am not advertising it, but find the book quite good. !Bought book 3 for my p1 boy. A little tough for him, but he learns the good phrases in the book, they give a sample 1compo for 1 pic, then a parallel cloze passage for the kid to fill in the good vocab, then mcq, vocab, fill-in-blank. At the end of the whole exercise, I asked my boy to rewrite the compo using the helping words on his own.
hopefully that helps him

maybe some of you can check out the books 1 to 6

[jedamum]

Working_Kiasu_Mum:

I came across this assessment book in popular on zoom in vocab for creative writing from casco.

is that the title of the book?

[yithz]

Thank you all for your useful tips.

[Joy]

yithz:

Thank you all for your useful tips.

Hi yithz

I have pm some infor regarding creative writing.

Have been doing lots of research on it during this school holidays as well as sending gal to try out a writing class.so, manage to get some experience out of it.


Hope it helps.

[Joy]

Hi


Can check whether anyone knows of a centre that offered good creative writing courses?

I have tried one,too structured and its an hour session inclusive time that teacher used to go thr the pic before starting…it allows little time and no time for the child to expand on the writing.

rgds
Joy

[BlueBells]

I send my girl to J&E for creative writing, and she will be in P3 next year. I have seen 3 parents pull out their kids because they don’t see any improvements in their kids’ work.


For me, I do not expect to see improvements in leaps and bounds, and because my girl has been there since P1, the improvements would have been minute, but adding up along the way. For her SA2 composition, there are only 2 or 3 who scored band 2 (8 or 9 out of 10 marks) for it, and my girl is one of them; and her teacher did comment that she can write pretty well.

[Joy]

[Moderator's note: Topics split and merged.]


Hi chiefkiasu

I have been doing lots of homework on the above and found this that you have written.Could you kindly enlighten me how to train a kid on Organization skills and techniques and content building for creative writing

Thanks

ChiefKiasu:

CL:

... however, in P1 creative writing is different. Maybe different teacher has differnt style. It is more on desk bound...

Hi CL, thanks for your details. They are very helpful. It appears then that the main issue is whether the creative writing programme offered by BC is suitable for your child.

Creative writing is hard for most Singaporean children, because it requires multiple skills, including:
1. good language command
2. creativity in generating ideas
3. organizational skills to link ideas together into a coherent and interesting story line.

To improve on creative writing, the best way is really to encourage the child to read voraciously. That would improve command of language, and fill up the mind with new ideas that can be repurposed for various scenarios for creative writing. Personally, I don't think it is possible for a child to sit in a classroom taking instructions from teachers and become very good in a language or creative in writing. It is, of course, possible for a course to drill students with \"pre-canned\" passages for common exam/test topics so that students can regurgitate verbatim during the tests, but I think that completely misses the point and is more likely to kill off any remaining vestiges of interest in a child for creative writing. It is probably better to just let the child read widely any book of his/her interest and get him/her to summarize what he/she has read, first verbally, and then in writing.

Organization skills and techniques, on the other hand, can be trained. Most good stories have an intro, a body, and an ending. There should be a cast, an event, and a lesson to be learnt. This is where creative writing courses should focus on.