Literature, Novels

The Unreliable Narrator – The Great Gatsby

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We are used to the unreliable narrator.  From Lolita’s Humbert Humbert to Maisie in What Masie Knew, reading in the gap between the voice we hear and the author’s promptings, is, for most students of literature, a necessary skill. The beauty and subtlety of meaning builds up in the words not said, the judgement of the reader being so central a part of the creation of the novel. Or so I thought until I started teaching literature and re-examined my own reactions to certain novels in doing so.

A good writer draws you into their world until you forget that it is not real, even forget there is another world besides that one. The better the writer, the more ‘real’ the world they create. When the world is spoken into being by the narrator, is it not natural that we should take him or her seriously as the creator? I am liable to be fooled by people’s rhetoric, their description or presentation of themselves, even in the real world. I look back on times when I have accepted a friend’s version of themselves rather than using the facts about them, their actions, their history, to be a guide. I have often stumbled, hurt and bewildered, on suddenly discovering that there is a gap between the picture they present and the reality of their lives. In theory, this ought to be easier to spot in fiction, but I still get drawn in!

This error, however, when it regards literature, is not just gullibility. It is the mistake, that so many students make, which is to forget for an instant that all of the world they are reading is a deliberate creation of its author. Analysing the role of the unreliable narrator is to acknowledge that there is a voice outside the novel which speaks to the reader.

Nick Carraway is such a smooth talker that it is easy to fall for his charm.  He is educated, reasonable, quietly critical, melancholy and cynical. Scratch beneath the surface and we see a very different man, however. He appears to be a gentleman, but his roots are as nefarious as Gatsby’s. They have a tradition that they are descended from the Dukes of Buccleuch, ‘but the actual founder of my line was my grandfather’s brother, who came here in fifty-one, sent a substitute to the civil war, and started the wholesale hardware business that my father carries on today.’ (Ch 1 p. 8) In effect the family represent themselves as aristocratic, when in fact they started as war profiteers.

Nick’s treatment of women also sounds a warning bell. He says in chapter one, ‘I came east, permanently I thought’. Then later, pinned down by Daisy’s questions, admits that he left a girl behind: ‘The fact that gossip had published the banns was one of the reasons I came east’. (p.24)  He continues to write to the girl, however: ‘I’d been writing letters once a week and signing them ‘love Nick’’(p.59).  That doesn’t stop him dating Jordan Baker.  He doesn’t quite fool himself into thinking he loves her: ‘I wasn’t actually in love, but I felt a sort of tender curiosity’, but I think he fools her. To underline his point, Fitzgerald has Nick say, just after all this tangle of deceit and betrayal: ‘I am one of the few honest people I have ever known’. (p59)

How much clearer can it be?  Fitzgerald is leaning over to us and telling us not to trust his narrator. Nick falls for his own line, and only periodically sees beneath it to his true motivations. It is not surprising if the reader, especially a young inexperienced one, falls for his line as well.

Does this mean that his view of the world he narrates is flawed? Well, yes, I think it does. That does not mean that all his judgements of his fellow men and women are wrong, only that they are seen through the lens of his own upbringing, his own marriage to deceit and superficiality. This is in fact how we all see the world, I think, – through the dirty lens of our own flaws. We still see Gatsby’s tragedy and ache on seeing his downfall because of Nick’s judgement of him. The lack of snobbishness in his regard for Gatsby’s authenticity, ironically portrayed through his fabrication of his whole life story, immediately endears him to the reader. Nick loves Daisy, though she is a vacuous, superficial, thoughtless woman, and through his love we can appreciate Gatsby’s. Nick is horrified by the corruption in his society, while being part of it. But in the end, though he is sickened by it all, he does not make judgements.  Or at least they do not lead to action. Except to remove himself from the scene.

The beautiful complexity of the interplay between theme, action and narrator is one of the elements to savour and to treasure in The Great Gatsby. Nick’s poetic charm is what we read the book for.  We are left, however, with some unpalatable truths, pointed out, glossed over, ignored or inadvertently highlighted by the elegant, self-deceiving Nick Carraway.

Literature, Poetry

History by John Burnside

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Students often seem to struggle with this poem, perhaps because of its erratic and chaotic versification, perhaps because it is hard to pin down what the poet is trying to say. For me though, it evokes feelings which run deeper than a surface understanding of poetic intentions or themes.

Perhaps this is because of where the poem is set. Not only is the poem set on a specific date – September 2001 – which of course makes us expect that the poem will be musings on the horrific events of 9/11 – but it is also set in a particular place. The West Sands in St Andrews was the scene for many rambles with friends, and even romantic walks with my boyfriend (now husband of 26 years), while I was at university. The wild beauty of it, its cold, grey linear austerity, strips of sky, sea, beach and land, stay with me as more than a memory. It is the physicality of where the poem is set, in this landscape, one that is well known to me, which has helped me understand it; it is key to my interpretation of the poem. Truthfully, I have not read enough to know how close that is to others’ ideas of what is being discussed, but the geography of St Andrews’ West Sands seems to me to reflect the ideas at the heart of the poem.

Burnside writes about the in-between: the spaces between reality and imagination – ‘between the world we own/and what we dream about’; between life and living – ‘finding evidence of life’ – and fear and death – ‘dizzy with the fear of losing everything’. The beach where the narrator is playing with his son is a strip of sand between the sea and the land. It is also sandwiched between two places – Leuchars and St Andrews. It seems to me that, in the poem, St Andrews represents the academic, the philosophical, and Leuchars represents war, destruction and death. Leuchars is the site of an RAF station where pilots learn to fly as they have to in war. The line ‘that gasoline smell from Leuchars gusting across the golf links’ reminds us of the terrible events of 9/11. Even when we are taken deep into the details of the sea and the beach, the ‘petrol blue’ of the jellyfish remind us of the RAF uniform, bringing us back to the terrorist events, war and destruction. St Andrews is a town with an ancient university, a seat of learning since 1413. It is where Burnside is a lecturer. The tight versification, its formality and philosophical considerations in the lines ‘At times I think what makes us who we are…’ bring us to St Andrews, the formal, traditional, erudite university town. Pressed in on both sides of the West Sands, the military might of RAF Leuchars at one end of the beach and the esoteric ideological university at the other, the poet finds himself in the middle. He is in-between the hard realities of the effects and consequences of terrorism and the abstract thoughts of academia.

The West Sands is also, of course, in-between the land and the sea. The semantic field of the sea, its tides and marine life, run through the whole poem. From the prosaic events of a child ‘gathering shells’ to the metaphorical language used to describe how we relate to others – ‘the drift and tug of other bodies’, the images of the sea are everywhere. These natural images, in the events of the poem and in so many images throughout, link us to the title of the poem. It seems that the history Burnside is talking about is not only the historic events of the news – the terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers in New York – but also the history of the natural world. The ‘quiet local forms of history’ in nature’s collision with humanity. Even in its wildest state, nature is not cosy or pure. 

‘snail shells; shreds of razorfish; smudges of weed and flesh on tideworn stone’

The sibilance of this line – apparently listing things little Lucas is finding on the beach – creates a sense of uneasiness. The feel of this nature is sharp (‘razor’), tattered (‘shreds’ ‘tideworn’) and destructive (‘smudges of …flesh’). Even the opening image of ‘sand spinning off in ribbons along the beach’ – something the cold Fife wind often achieves on that exposed coast – is an image of exposure, of bleakness. The imagery of fish captured in human structures towards the end of the poem, has a positivity to it but also the sense of enclosure and confinement; the carp are ‘bright’ and ‘gold’ but they are still ‘captive’ and unable to sleep. This idea is mirrored elsewhere in the poem: ‘though we are confined by property/ what tethers us to gravity and light…’ We are confined and tethered, but to light, not to darkness.

So, the sea on one side contrasts with all that is beyond on the other side of the beach.  What then, does the beach represent? That seems to me to be the personal, the poet’s family life, the little details of his ordinary life. The image of the child in this poem links to innocence: ‘a child’s first nakedness’. Simultaneously, I feel the beach is simply where he finds himself, in-between the great events of life, looking at the details, at this ‘gazed-upon and cherished world’. It is in the minuteness of the observation, the ‘local’ things around us, that our own personal history is to be recorded.

The poem deals in ambiguity and contrasts: between confinement and freedom, of the ‘world we own’ and the one ‘we dream about’; between history recorded in great world events which shape the future and the small, observed details of nature; between the beauty and austerity of the natural world and its combining with the human which restricts yet gives hope and light.

The geography of the poem is written in every line. It is in the military Leuchars and its relation to seismic world events and in the abstract ideas of the academic St Andrews. It is in the sea, nature and how we interact with it, and in the beach where we live and play and hope. The poet is ‘reading from the book of silt and tides’ to tell us our history is in all the elements of our lives.  The poet wonders about ‘who we are’ and thinks we are ‘lost between the world we own and what we dream about’. He is ‘dizzy with the fear of losing everything’ yet the feeling the poem transmits isn’t just of ‘muffled dread’ but of brightness, innocence and hope.

Reading, Teaching

Why I support children’s love of Diary of a Wimpy Kid.

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Or why ‘encouraging higher reading levels’ is not an easy task. 

Teenagers are reading at below their chronological age. The problem with that is the complexity of GCSE texts makes the English exams inaccessible for many students. Those whose daily (weekly or monthly) diet of reading is mainly Tom Gates and Diary of a Wimpy Kid will struggle with A Christmas Carol and Macbeth. The answer, many schools seem to think, is to force students to read harder books.  I can see the logic, but it doesn’t work.

It’s not hard to work out why.  Reading is essentially solitary.  Of course it is wonderful to read to someone or be read to, but the majority of the reading a young person will do must be done alone.  To do something by yourself, you must be motivated to do it.  Someone who has the choice only of books that are at the top of their ability will inevitably feel less motivated to read alone, particularly if you were struggling to sell them reading as a hobby in the first place.

Schools have got into the habit – especially through the Accelerated Reader scheme (which some day I may have the courage to write about honestly) – of trying to force children to choose books from a narrow range because they are at the ‘right level’. This harms reading habits in at least two ways. Firstly, the students don’t have the breadth of choice they need.  To love reading, you have got to like the genre, the style, the characters, the themes of the books you read.  If you have only a few to choose from, you could find yourself bored or even repelled by what you are reading.  It could easily put you off picking up another book. Secondly, if the books are at the top of the child’s reading ability, they will get tired of working so hard every time they start to read. They will associate reading with hard work, instead of with fun, enjoyment and pleasure.

None of us read to the top of our ability all the time.  It will not surprise you to learn that I am a reader. I love to read and spend a lot of time doing it. I do read books which are very challenging at times. The books I really find a challenge are likely to be modernist works (like James Joyce’s Ulysses or Samuel Beckett’s Murphy), or, alternatively, books written in old English (like Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde or Piers Plowman). There is no way in the world I could get out a poem by Chaucer every night before I go to sleep and still keep my love of reading.  I adore a good murder mystery, a romance, a fantasy book.  I love children’s books of all genres. They do not stretch me as much intellectually, but I love them.  Why do we not allow children the freedom to choose in the way we would like to be able to choose for ourselves?

The other issue I have with reading to the top of your ability is that, if it is guided by teachers, parents and librarians, it will become a way of being judged and judging others.  “Are you only on the silver books?  I’m already on the red ones!” You might hear a comment like that in a primary school where they focus on reading schemes.  But I have taught children who are embarrassed to admit their Accelerated Reading score, knowing it is lower than others in their class.  And I have seen the distress of students wanting to take home a book which is not in their ability band, being refused, and then thinking “Oh that means they think I’m too stupid for that book.  I must be rubbish at reading!”. As soon as we make reading about success and failure rather than fun, well being and interest, we will alienate the very people we want to encourage.  

So, encouraging young people to read is to foster a love of reading. Of course, try and offer other books with other ideas in them, if your child or student has got stuck in a rut with the same old thing. But to narrow down choices, make books about what level you are on, make reading about ‘work’ rather than fun, will be a deterrent to continuing to read. To put it as mildly as possibly, it will be counter productive. We want children to do well, to improve, but we want them to enjoy themselves as well.  If we don’t make it fun, they won’t do it. A simple lesson we could all do with learning!

Literature, Reading, Teaching

The Reading Gap

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There is undeniably a gap between the difficulty of GCSE texts and the majority of teenagers’ reading ability. I want to ask why.  And what can we do about it?

Impenetrable literature

As much as I love Dickens and Shakespeare – and I do! – in my experience, many, many students struggle with them. Shakespeare, particularly, presents challenges of language as well as context. For the GCSE literature exam, however, students have two (or three) years to study, discuss and digest the language, ideas and characters they will be examined on. The language exam, however, presents students with nineteenth century texts which they have never seen before. The length of the sentences, the latinate vocabulary, the expected understanding of nineteenth century life all contribute to the difficulty of comprehending the texts.

Reading standards

Add to the mix the apparently falling standards of teenage reading and we can see exactly why students struggle.

A study done in 2018 by Renaissance UK (the company who provides the Accelerated Reading Scheme) shows that “Book difficulty drops off sharply in Year 7, with secondary students consistently reading behind their chronological age.”  If all you have been reading up to now is Diary of a Wimpy Kid and the latest David Walliams book, it will be highly challenging to jump to Wilkie Collins and Charlotte Bronte.

As quoted in a Huffington Post article, Professor Keith Topping of Dundee University, who carried out the research, said:

“To avert a further slide in literacy levels in secondary schools, pupils should be encouraged to push themselves to read more difficult books.

“By their teenage years pupils are more likely to take advice from their friends and peers than their teachers and parents about the types of books they should be reading.

“With this in mind, teachers could encourage them to talk more openly about what they are reading and make appropriate suggestions to their classmates.”

What does Professor Topping imagine teachers and librarians have been doing all of this time? If only such a simple and obvious suggestion was all that it would take to solve the problem.

Teenage Reading

As anyone who has a teenager or teaches them will know, there is always a resistance to anything that the establishment – their school, their parents, the government – want them to do. Lots of teenagers read.  Of course they do. I have had many lovely hours chatting about books with young people of all ages. But can we blame those who don’t? Who has time to read when they’re busy growing an adult brain, struggling with crushes and spots and agonising self-doubt, whilst experimenting with alternative cultures and lifestyles? (that’s sex, drugs and alcohol to us anxious parents).

But here, we are talking about people who can choose whether to read or not. The actual picture is not so simple.

To understand Dickens, Shakespeare and the like, someone will need (at least) a reading age of 16. Let’s not forget that a fair few of the students sit their GCSEs before they actually reach this age. There are barriers to reaching the needed standard other than your actual age . Those who speak a different language at home, those whose parents don’t have the means to offer them resources, books and experiences, those who don’t have the middle class cultural capital to understand many of the set texts, those who don’t have parental support, those who struggle for many reasons beyond their control through illness, mental health problems, family situations and so on. I am sure I have not covered half of the reasons why students might have problems reaching the impossibly high standards, but it is very often not through lack of intelligence, not through lack of hard work, but simply through circumstances of birth, environment, economics and society.

Closing the gap

I wonder whether we should reconsider the level we expect students to reach simply to pass their GCSE English. All I have been talking about so far is comprehension. As you know, students also have to evaluate, compare and analyse. The gap between their previous reading experience and that expected at GCSE grows ever wider. However, assuming this is the system we all have to live within, our responsibility as parents, as teachers, as librarians is to try and close that gap. How do we do it?

I have already written about how parents can help their children love to read, about how teachers can encourage reading in the classroom, and there are thousands of words written on the subject every day. As always there is no easy answer. To simplify, we need to close the poverty gap, fund education appropriately, and start prioritising reading at High School.  I know – it’s just wishing for the impossible. But if we focus on reading during Key Stage 3 (Year 7 to Year 9), then students wouldn’t suddenly find themselves lost as they begin Key Stage 4 (Year 10 to Year 11). Primary schools do a fantastic job of teaching our children to read. At Year 7, we put all that on the back-burner and hope the children have got the message.  They haven’t.

I hope all that wasn’t too controversial and opinionated. After all, what do I know?  I just see the results of this reading gap and the upset and misery it causes. If there was an easy solution, all those amazing teachers and librarians would have found it by now. As it always does, it just comes back to reading.

Reading

Make Reading a Priority- you know you should!

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You know you should read more!

Believe it or not, we’re not trying to find new and inventive ways to torture you.  Here are some reasons – given by the finest minds from across the centuries – for you to read.

How can you be a citizen without it?

Navigating this complicated world without being highly literate is a dangerous business. Like it or not, once you are 18, you must take seriously your responsibility to understand the world around you. If you can’t read, understand, analyse and evaluate books and articles, then you are going to be easily manipulated by the politicians, advertisers and sales people. Why waste the gift you have worked so hard to achieve?

There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.
Joseph Brodsky

As centuries of dictators have known, an illiterate crowd is the easiest to rule; since the craft of reading cannot be untaught once it has been acquired, the second-best recourse is to limit its scope.
Alberto Manguel, A History of Reading

70 out of 100 people in the world cannot read… if you can read then you are the luckiest out of 2 million people in the world that cannot.
Call Bain

It makes you a better person.

To learn what life looks like from inside someone else’s head, there is nothing better than reading. All the things that make the world a better place -kindness, understanding, empathy, thoughtfulness – you practise them while reading. Feel like annoying someone because of their appearance? Read Wonder by RJ Palacio. Feel like walking past that homeless man on the way home from school? Read Give Me Shelter by Tony Bradman. I could go on, but you get the idea.

Reading is an exercise in empathy; an exercise in walking in someone else’s shoes for a while. —Malorie Blackman

Reading is an act of civilization; it’s one of the greatest acts of civilization because it takes the free raw material of the mind and builds castles of possibilities. —Ben Okri

 Reading takes us to places and teaches us of people we couldn’t otherwise know.

We may feel like we’re stuck in our little lives, without money, independence and freedom to travel the world. Books can take us there instead! I’m not saying, don’t travel. But books are a mode of intellectual travel. Not only can they take us to new places, but they can take us back in time. How else can you overhear the conversations of people long dead? They can also take us to worlds which do not yet exist. And you can be part of that!

“The reading of all good books is like conversation with the finest (people) of the past centuries.” – Descartes

Reading makes immigrants of us all. It takes us away from home, but more important, it finds homes for us everywhere. —Jean Rhys

A capacity, and taste, for reading gives access to whatever has already been discovered by others. —Abraham Lincoln

These are only a few of the excellent reasons to read, keep on reading, and read some more. What are you waiting for?

Reading, Teaching

Making Reading a Priority – in school

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When we are thinking about how to get children to read, I think we need to look at (at least) three different elements – the parents and how they can help, the teachers and what their role is, and then, how the young people themselves can change their own habits.

In my last blog post, I gave a little advice (albeit mainly common sense) on how to encourage your child to read.  This post will look more at what can be done in school. I worked as a school librarian for over ten years, with the aim of promoting reading and fostering a reading culture.  Since then, I have done my PGCE and have taught English. So, I have experience from both sides of the fence; I understand the pressures teachers and schools face, and the frustrations of librarians trying to make a difference.

If there are any teachers reading this, ask yourself, have you ever felt guilty for reading instead teaching your class to write (another) PEE/PEA/PETER/SQI paragraph?  Did that fifteen minutes reading at the end of a long day or on a Friday afternoon seem too much of a relief? Did you ever feel you really should be doing something else? Because it is supposed to be pleasurable (and it is), it does not seem like work. If it is not work, then can it really be doing us good? Well, yes, it can!

I don’t want to assume that teachers don’t read to their classes, in secondary as well as primary.  I know they do.  I also know the pressures on them to get through the curriculum. What is there to show for an afternoon reading?  How can you prove that it has improved student progress? You can’t. (Though of course, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t.) The pressures of a full GCSE timetable, such high expectations for students of all abilities, not to mention the accountability measures which burden teachers’ working lives, mean that reading gets squeezed out, however valuable we know it to be.

The truth is, the students who come from homes where their parents read, where they were read to, and where there are lots of books to choose from, will always have an advantage. The school’s job is to aim to level the playing field.

These are just a few things teachers can try:

Find time to read in class Read in registration; read at the end of the day; read poetry and novels; act out plays; read newspaper articles; read film reviews; get the students to read them and you read them too.

Model reading Let the students catch you reading, at the beginning of a lesson, at break time or lunch time. They will be interested in what you are doing and will see that it is something you truly enjoy.

Share your enthusiasm Tell students about books you have read, recommend books to them, stick up your current read on your door. Enthusiasm is infectious.

Talk about reading Peer recommendations are so effective in encouraging reading. Knowing what to read next is half the battle. This could be a five minute discussion at the beginning of a lesson, a post-it note display or a post-box with recommendations to share at intervals.

Create a Class Library This is not to replace or detract from the school’s main library, but there should always be interesting, varied and age appropriate books available in the classroom. To regularly update it, and not to get too concerned when the books are not returned, these things cost money which may well come out of the teacher’s own pocket. PTAs and charity shops can be a help with that problem.

These are things individual teachers can do, but the only way to truly change things for the better is to create a reading culture throughout the whole school. That is too large a subject to deal with at the end of a post. Something so close to my heart will have to have a section to itself. But if you are choosing a place to work (as a teacher or teaching assistant) or a school for your child to go to, ask yourself “Do they have a reading culture?”  The main way you will be able to tell if they have, is by asking if they have a library with a dedicated (and, ideally, qualified) librarian.

Next time I want to write about how teenage students can read more to boost their literacy, to tackle the all-important GCSEs and, of course, because it is – and remains – wonderful fun!

Reading

Making Reading a Priority – at home

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Many of you already write about how you fit reading into a busy and pressurised schedule. My tips and ideas for making reading a priority are not new or really very original. My excuse for writing them anyway is that so many schools, parents and students do not make it a priority.

How can I get my child to read?

So many parents have asked me how to get their child to read. As always, there is no magic formula. There are things, though, which can make all the difference. Here are a few of them:

Create choice We want our child to enjoy the book they are reading. If they don’t, they will soon put it down. To make sure they pick up a book they are going to enjoy, they must have a wide variety to choose from. This is where libraries are great! There are thousands of books you can read, and there is no jeopardy. If you don’t like it, you can put it back. (And you haven’t just spent £6.99 on it!)

Build on interests Whatever your child is into, there will be books to match. If your child is into dinosaurs, there are lots of non-fiction books they can choose to read. But you can also find many stories with dinosaurs in them, from the picture book series Harry and the Bucketful of Dinosaurs by Ian Whybrow, illustrated by Adrian Reynolds, to the Dinosaur Cove books by Rex Stone. The same can be said for ballet, football, cycling….

Model reading If you read, your child will see it as a normal thing which adults do. This not only helps them when they are small, but will help them make that all important transition from an avid young reader to a keen teenage reader.

Read to your child This is the obvious one! We all know this is so important. Fitting it into our daily lives isn’t always so easy. It can be such a special time when you can share something with your son or daughter, something that both of you will always remember. Just before bedtime is a great moment, if you can manage it. However hard it is to do in our frenetic, busy lives, it really is worth the investment.

Make it a treat This piece of advice is easy to give, but hard to follow (as all good advice is). I have not always managed this myself, but it is something to aspire to. The aim is to encourage our children to see reading as the wonderful, exciting journey it is. Books as presents, a special treat to go and choose any book they want from the book shop, a trip to see an author, a storytelling event at your local bookshop or library, these are all excellent ways to signal to your child that reading is fun. Nagging them because they haven’t picked up the book you spent a tenner on, is not! Maybe you have done this. I certainly have! But remembering that it is an amazing, magical thing (not something you wish your child did more, like tidying up their dirty clothes) will help your child realise it too!

Create time Once your child has their book, it interests them, and they see reading it as a fun and interesting activity, the next thing they need is time to read it. Children can’t be relied on to organise their day. Sometimes you need to help them do that. Setting aside half an hour which is reading time – at bedtime, after tea or whenever – is a really great idea. The key to this, I have found, is making sure that during that time there is no option to play on any electronic equipment! If they can choose to do what they like during that half an hour – draw, play, read or whatever – but can not play computer games or watch YouTube, then they may well end up choosing to read. Especially if you share that time with them.

These are just a few ideas. And it is only the very first step of the reading process. What happens to reading when they get to school? That is what I want to talk about next time!

Are there any things which you have found work well for you and your child? Are there any other tips you could share? If so, please do put your ideas in the comments.

Reading, Vocabulary

My First Blog Post: Increase your vocabulary – Read!

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A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies…The man who never reads lives only one.

— George R.R. Martin

One of the things which is hardest to teach, but necessary for the most basic understanding of texts, is how to widen your vocabulary. This is even more of an issue now, since GCSE English language and literature papers require a very high level of comprehension, even before any of the more complex skills can be displayed.

So, what do you do? What do you recommend your students do? The answer is both easy and incredibly difficult. Read. To improve your understanding of how texts work, to increase your vocabulary, to improve your ability to write well yourself, you must read. Not just the texts set in class. Not just text books. No, you must read a whole variety of things, from the nineteenth century extracts that you will encounter in the exam, to newspaper articles, letters, instructions, reports, poems, jokes, and so on and so on.

The real question, which I do not have an immediate answer to, is how to encourage someone else to read – from the ordinary teenage student to the adult who has never felt at home with the written word. I have worked in school libraries, taught in classrooms and privately one-to-one, and, though I have ideas to share, I have not found an easy solution to the problem.

Step one, though, is to acknowledge that the problem is there. Reading is often not seen as ‘proper’ homework, or as ‘proper’ work in a classroom (at least outside the primary school). Schools are not funded adequately to provide the books required, nor, more importantly, the librarians to teach, inspire and encourage reading.

I often teach students who do not understand the texts in front of them, partly as a result of a narrow vocabulary, partly as a result of a general lack of experience of reading. Once they are in Year 11 it is hard (though not impossible) to reverse the trend. How can we tackle the issue earlier? Once someone has had a life time of lack of success in reading, how can we change it from a chore to a pleasure?

If I truly had the answer to that, I would not be sitting at home writing this blog, but would be hired by every school and teaching institution in the land. I do have some thoughts which might help, though. So, some of my subsequent blog posts will hopefully give some ideas to individuals, to teachers, to schools, to parents about how to find reading a pleasure and encourage it in others. The rest of the time, I will simply share my thoughts about the things we teach at GCSE and A level, in the hope that it may help someone somewhere understand more and achieve more.

As C.S. Lewis wrote, “We read to know we are not alone”. Whatever our struggles, we can all agree that it is easier to struggle together! What have we got to lose?

Literature

Welcome to Enjoy English

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I want to start a blog because I feel that too many people have to study or teach English, but do not really enjoy it. I would like to change that!

Whether you are studying for your GCSE or A level, or have children or friends who are, or whether you teach these things yourself, I have found that often there is precious little joy shared, and very little enthusiasm for the books, the poems, the plays and the language which we study.

It doesn’t have to be this way!

Obviously, there are thousands of you out there who already love reading, books, language and how it works, and love communicating that with others. I have read some of your ideas and I want to join you!

It can’t be denied, though, that the trudge of getting reluctant students through what sometimes seems to be a cruelly difficult (and often irrelevant) exam, can suck the beauty out of what we want to share. I want to try and escape from that feeling and break out into a sincere love of all things literary.


Feel free to add your comments, ideas and thoughts. I look forward to hearing from you!

Exploring, discussing and revelling in reading.

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