Your teenager isn’t improving at essay writing
Here’s How I Improved
This is the first newsletter that I have written where I am concerned you may feel that I am repeating myself.
I have written about my revision advice for essay subjects before,
Maybe not exactly in this way,
But I have.
And it makes me feel like I am doing you a disservice to write about broadly the same thing again.
But my mum had a conversation with me yesterday that made me feel that this was extremely necessary.
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For those of you who do not know, my mum is head of the mindset coaching team at ILS.
She has been working with a student,
We’ll call him Jimmy,
For a little while.
And Jimmy is aiming for mostly passes and some middling grades in his GCSEs.
About a month ago,
My mum asked me if I could spend 10 minutes with Jimmy discussing how I revise for History and English Language.
And I agreed.
I spent my 10 minutes explaining to Jimmy, in a fairly impassioned manner, the reason why students struggle to actually improve their essay writing ability,
And my method for doing so (detailed below).
I left the call feeling happy.
I felt that I had really helped Jimmy and that he had understood what steps he needed to take.
Jimmy then got his mock results back today and was not happy with how he did.
My mum asked him, amongst other things, if he had been following my method,
And he honestly said he had not as “he wasn’t done with the content yet.”
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I take two interrelated things away from this story.
1) Students (and parents) are going to find it more difficult than I appreciate to realise that they do not need to know the content before getting better at the skills required for the exam. In fact, trying to do so will only be a significant detriment.
2) For all of us to make a change, we usually need the advice repeated. Hence, I am going to occasionally circle back to my most impactful advice in these newsletters.
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My Method Of Improving At Essay Writing
DOING PRACTICE ESSAYS IS NOT THE SAME AS GETTING BETTER AT THE SKILL OF ESSAY WRITING!
Apologies for the capitals, I just had to get that out.
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Your teenager’s grade in an essay subject will be defined by the level they write their essay at.
So these are the steps to improve at essay writing:
Step 1: Write/re-write an essay or even part of an essay.
Step 2: Send this essay in to a teacher/tutor to get feedback.
Step 3: OBSESSES over the feedback. This will likely mean you have to go to the teacher/tutor and ask for further clarification/expansion on their points. You will watch videos, you will study model answers and examiners reports.
Step 4 – The Step That Makes You The Money: Write/re-write an essay but this time in the easiest possible conditions. What are the easiest possible conditions? Notes in front of you, no time limit, feedback in front of you, model answer in front of you etc.
Step 5: Repeat
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This method relies on a student really doing step 3 and step 4 to the best of their abilities,
And unfortunately, I can practically assure you that your teenager is not.
I am practically begging you and your teenager to spend far more time making sure that their revision is intentional and strategic – which you can do by following this method.
Step 4 is like working out at the gym.
If you want to increase the maximum weight you can life you will need to push the limits most sessions,
So that months down the line,
Your maximum weight from before,
Now feels easy,
And you normal working level is at a far higher place than before.
The exact same principle applies to essay writing.
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I hope you all have a great week ahead,
Best wishes,
Joel