11+ Online School – Grammar in Creative Writing Course

Course Timeline

• 5 Days of course
• Each Session = 1 hour 30 minutes

Course Dates

11+ Grammar in Creative Writing Course (Weekend slots)

Brief Course Outline

Our Grammar in Writing course is designed to prepare students to approach 11+ creative writing with a solid foundation of grammatical skills. It will encourage them to pay close attention to the accuracy of their writing, allowing their creativity and imaginative ideas to be properly and assuredly presented. Paying attention to key aspects of grammar – word types, tenses, verb agreement, punctuation, sentence types and more – this course is thorough and detailed. Book your place for an excellent preparatory resource for your child.

1. Word Types: Descriptive

Descriptive word types – adjectives, adverbs, nouns and verbs – are an essential part of making your story interesting and imaginative to read. We will discuss each type in detail – how to use each one accurately within a sentence – to provide a strong foundation of high level vocabulary for students. We will also cover common uses of prefixes and suffixes to ensure accuracy and variety within students’ writing. This first session will spark a sense of creativity alongside encouraging grammatical excellence.

2. Word Types: Functional

In this, we will consider the importance of the small, often forgotten word types such as prepositions, determiners, conjunctions, connectives and modal verbs. Through a range of activities, we will practice using each one accurately, allowing students to understand the purpose of each one in creating cohesive and varied sentences.

3. Tenses and Verb Agreement

It will focus on the use of tenses. By considering the simple, perfect and progressive forms of each tense, we will discuss how to maintain consistency throughout a piece of writing. Students will also learn how to move effectively between tenses in order to create a more advanced and ambitious piece of work. This session will also cover accuracy in verb agreement (across the tenses), including specificities like negatives, plurals, the subjunctive form and imperative verbs.

4. Accuracy in High Level Punctuation & Capitalisation

Next, we will move towards punctuation. This session will cover the grammatical elements of the more advanced punctuation styles such as semi-colons, colons, dashes, ellipsis and quotation marks. Expanding on this, we will learn how to accurately write direct and reported speech. We will also cover the use of paragraphs in structuring a story effectively and powerfully.

5. Sentence Types

In this final session, we will use all of the story-writing elements accumulated and employ them to practice the correct ways of constructing sentences. This skill is essential for making your writing fluent, interesting and creative. We will consider how to vary your sentence openers – by using connectives, adjectives or adverbs – and how to choose sentence types effectively, making your creative writing engaging and absorbing to read. Students will also learn how to write all sentence types within both the active and passive voice, as well as how to write correct subordinate, relative, and conditional clauses that will enhance writing and interest the reader.

Course Materials

• Lecture Notes
• Homework