Introduction to Academic Voice

Originally created for A Level, I’ve used this resource with Year 8-13 to open a discussion about academic voice and style. It contains three paragraphs I wrote on Lady Macbeth with prompts and space below each for students to respond to impressions of the writer’s tone and register. The paragraphs all address the same content, but in increasingly sophisticated ways. I encourage students to think about their own voice, stressing that they do not have to write like the third example in all ways (they might, for instance, find it far too ‘flowery’–some of my Year 9s thought it was terrible!), but they can take phrases, sentence constructions, and ideas from it for their own writing.

I like to use this as an example of my own changing thinking, as well, and ‘edit’ the third example in front of them as I think out loud about how I might write it differently now.