Yes, tearful 11-year-olds. Your response was entirely proportionate to the quality of the pieces of writing presented to you during these tests. A glorious career in reviewing awaits.
But we’re not here to criticise. There is no criticism; there are only learning opportunities. So, Department for Education, here is your lesson: knowing your subordinating conjunctions from your prepositions is not an end in itself. The end goal is to be able to produce clear and comprehensible writing.
Here are 12 ways in which your own reading-comprehension test fails miserably in pursuit of this:
1. Match syntax to sense
“Dawn was casting spun-gold threads across a rosy sky over Sawubona Game Reserve as Martine Allen took a last look around to ensure there weren’t any witnesses.”
What is the author trying to say here? The salient point is that Martine Allen is checking for witnesses. This is exciting, right? She’s about to do something dangerous or illicit. But the sentence begins with a protracted description of dawn. This does not convey excitement. Nor does the lengthy sentence create a sense of urgency. Here is how to convey excitement and danger: ”The sun was coming up. Martine Allen looked around for witnesses.”
2. Being able to identify a definer isn’t the same as being able to use one correctly
“She leaned forward like a jockey on the track, wound her fingers through a silver mane, and cried, “Go, Jemmy, go.”
I’m going to overlook the fact that describing someone as “like a jockey” when they’re riding a four-legged horse-like animal is not so much a simile as a statement of the bleeding obvious. But “wound her fingers through a silver mane”? ”A silver mane”? Did she have several to choose from? Were they hanging on hooks in front of her? The phrase “a silver mane”, out of context, simply makes no sense.
3. Pronouns need to be used wisely
“The white giraffe sprang forward so suddenly that she was almost unseated.”
Someone I know once wrote the sentence: “He touched her breasts and they fell to the floor.” Remember that, next time you’re using a pronoun in a sentence.
4. Adjectives: just because you can, it doesn’t mean you should
“They swept past the dam and a herd of bubble-blowing hippos, past a flock of startled egrets lifting from the trees like white glitter, and out onto the open savannah plain.”
I hope Martine Allen brought a machete with her, because she’ll need it to hack her way through the adjectival overload of this sentence. Far too many attention-grabbing adjectives, interlaced with occasional similes that crop up like weeds in a garden, distract from the fundamental purpose of the underlying sentence.
5. Bigger is not better
”‘No faster than a trot and, in fact, I’d rather you stuck to a walk,’ she’d counselled sternly.”
We were all taught in primary school that there were more interesting words to use than “said”. This is an excellent exercise in vocabulary expansion, and a terrible piece of writing advice. “Said” is neutral: the eye skims over it, and the reader’s attention will be focused on the words actually being said. Anything else draws the eye away: the reader ends up focusing on the word “counselled”, rather than on the advice being given. As a special gift, I give you my favourite line in Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight: “‘Shush,’ he hushed me.’”
6. Remember who your narrator is
“Besides, what was the point of riding a giraffe if the most he was permitted to do was plod along like some arthritic pony from the local stables?”
Does this sound like something an 11-year-old girl would think? No, not even an 11-year-old girl who rides giraffes in her spare time.
7. Avoid clichés like the plague
”‘Faster, Jemmy!’ she yelled. ‘Run for your life.’”
On the bright side, at least she wasn’t telling him to run like the wind.
8. Punctuate properly. Please
“The struggle had been between two rival families - one had a lion as its symbol, the winner had a bear.”
I’ll forgive them the dash. But that comma should be a semicolon. As it stands, it is a crime against all that is grammatically good and true.
9. Balance your sentences
“The struggle had been between two rival families - one had a lion as its symbol, the winner had a bear.”
Even punctuated properly, that sentence remains hideously clumsy. Why not “the other had a bear”? The existing version reads like nothing more than a set-up for a reading-comprehension question.
10. Adverbs are like adjectives: just because you can, it doesn’t mean you should
”‘Come on,’ Maria said impatiently.”
What purpose is served by that “impatiently”? We already know she’s in a hurry to leave, by virtue of the fact that she’s saying “come on”. The verbiage actually reduces the sense of urgency.
11. Stating the obvious is stating the obvious, no matter which words you use
“Since then the phrase ‘dead as a dodo’ has been used to describe something which is lifeless.”
So: since then, the phrase “dead as a dodo” has been used to describe something dead.
12. Practise what you preach
“Then, in 1598, humans descended on this paradise, accompanied by their own animals - dogs, goats, cats (and a fair number of rats!).”
A seven-year-old would be docked marks for using that exclamation mark. The writer of this piece of prose doesn’t even have the excuse of being seven years old.
Want to keep up with the latest education news and opinion? Follow TES on Twitter and like TES on Facebook
