English
Department

The Yearbook Article

Alexandra Burdett in The Crucible.

The department's consultative role in the methodology criteria synthesises a psycholinguistic conceptual consensus in that innovatory validation actually diverges from a significant and procedural quotient, correlated by an insufficiently diagnostic and sociometric maladjustment of compensatory hypothetical strategies within it. Notwithstanding, the convergent thesis actually mitigates the consultative module. Therefore in the broader sweep, the basic evaluation is erroneous rendering the operational programme empirically invalid.

If you are still reading this article, I congratulate you, or perhaps I should be saying more fool you. 'Words, words, words' can be soundly based on grammar and syntax, have meaning in themselves and yet together be meaningless as in the case above. I feel that 'words'are moving in that direction at the moment - educational jargon, 'computer-speak' and a desire to impress with words to the point of total dishonesty beggar a teacher's life. Of course, as students mature, they wish to experiment with words - but it is when the experimentation becomes merely a desire to show-off that I become annoyed and it is then that vocabulary deteriorates towards sophisticated pompous verbosity. If it sounds good, it must be good; if it looks good, it must be good. That's our world and it adulterates the educator and the learner. It creates the 'swank' who rises high through form rather than ability, integrity and honesty.

Simplicity lies at the heart of clear communication but I fear that teaching simplicity in language is either being totally ignored by the would-be swank or even worse, is hindering students from progressing at all in a sham world.

Not that simplicity would have improved the meaning of the first paragraph of this article. I will begin again:

The department, when asked for help about how to do things, brings together an agreed discussion on language and thought, in which to make it newly to the point does in fact move away from a share of how to do things - ad nauseam.

However, what simple language has revealed is a much clearer recognition of the rubbish it is.

To write simply and with meaning takes time and the modern world has little time for time. One sixteen- year-old, Julius Real, let's call him, is going through the I.G.C.S.E. examination 'mill' at the time I write. He writes painfully slowly (timed examinations are not his strength!) and yet the sentences he writes are so beautifully simple - and precise - and at times deeply enriched. I hope he has succeeded and yet the system conspires against him ever enjoying and developing his talent. He tells me he hates writing. What I think he means - what I hope he means, is that he hates the pressure. I digress a little but if there is a theme, it is about this pressure - we are pressurised to show-off words to get on, pressurised to do things slickly, in the shortest possible time.

I have not talked explicitly about Literature, the finest literature has a directness that is conveyed through usually the richest (not the most verbose or complicated) of language but also sometimes through the most basic of language.

Experience of life and literature allow a writer to write and a reader to interpret the richness of figurative language, but at other times, it is the simplest language that conveys the richest meaning. Consider these quotations from Shakespeare - 'And nothing is but what is not' (Macbeth) or 'the rest is silence' (Hamlet). These words bring tears to the audience's eyes and yet they could not be more prosaic. it is within the context they have been written that they are so appropriately moving. In the end simplicity and clarity is not just about words but about technique and direction.

I return to Julius Real. He has all the requirements to be a very good, if not great writer. To repeat, he is painstaking and meticulous and writes without unnecessary embellishment and that takes time. If he becomes a writer, whether it be as a poet or Nuclear Physicist there will be something rewarding, even beautiful, worth reading there. I hope he realises his talent (in both senses of the word), for, at the moment, the world conspires against him - that opening paragraph of mine is not that far from what the 'literate' world most respects in writing.