Reviewing skills should be taught in English lessons

Recently, wearing my The Stage’s Education Editor’s hat, I judged a school student theatre review competition.

It was run by a theatre company which specialises in high quality issues-inspired plays. They are often about science, health and decision making and are performed mostly in secondary schools.

The company had invited teenagers who’d seen a specific production to submit a review for the competition.  I was asked to judge from a final shortlist of five.

It was an interesting task which left me reflecting on how reviews are most effectively written and how you learn to do them. It also set alarm bells ringing because I don’t think reviewing skills are being taught in schools, although the ability to analyse, assess and comment on something is pretty basic. Given my task my thoughts were focused on plays, but similar factors affect reviewing books, films, TV programmes, shops, holidays, products, restaurants or almost anything else.

The best possible training for any sort of writing is to read as many examples of the genre written by experienced people as you can.  That way you absorb the conventions and possible approaches. You won’t write, say, a decent novel, play or poem unless you’ve read plenty of novels, plays or poems. And exactly the same principle applies to theatre reviewing.

The first thing which struck me about the five reviews I read for this competition was that most of the writers had clearly read very few professional reviews – if any.

If you’re reviewing a show your first task is to assess it as a piece of theatre. That means commenting on directorial decisions, quality of acting, sets and other designs and how well it hangs together and tells a story.

Every good play deals with ‘issues’ and makes you think, but you really shouldn’t use nine tenths of your space in a review of King Lear for your thoughts and feelings about dementia and abuse of the elderly. Neither would it be appropriate in a review of Death of a Salesman to discourse at length about family values and failed ambition.

No one had told these students that. Far too little of the content of their reviews focused on the elements which make good theatre, although they were strong on the issues it raised. Although reviewing is one of the many skills taught in the National Curriculm – it is evidently being marginalised.

There were also alarming problems with English. Now, I’d been told to ignore the English so, with difficulty, I did. But I’m a former, passionate teacher of secondary English and now a writer of English textbooks (Galore Park Publishing). I’ve been deeply in love with this lovely language of ours for as long as I can remember and get very distressed when I see it mangled.

And ‘mangled’ is a polite word for most of what these students had written. Why have their English teachers not taught them to organise their thoughts in paragraphs?  Of the five entries, four were completely unparagraphed – and 5/600 words long. The impression given is random thoughts hurled down on paper in any old order.

Then there’s vocabulary. ‘Never use a long word where a short word will do’ should be written in huge letters and displayed in every English classroom in the country. It always was in mine. If teachers don’t stress this you end up with students who write ‘commence’ instead of ‘start’, ‘stated’, instead of ‘said’ and, once they learn the word ‘residence,’ they’ll never say ‘house’ ‘flat’ or ‘home’ again. And it leads to horrible, murky, convoluted prose as well as misuse of words.

And if teachers know how to use full stops and commas accurately I wish they’d share their knowledge with their students. Not one of the young reviewers whose work I read had a clue about correct punctuation. And lack of it muddles meaning.

It isn’t often that I itch to get back into my teaching harness. But I’d love to give these youngsters a few lessons. So much potential – but they’ll never make it as writers without sorting the basics.

The theatre company concerned has floated the idea that next year I might do an interview or on-line tutorial, or something similar, which young competitors would be advised to consult before they start. Makes sense and I’ve agreed, in principle, to do it.

Less emphasis should be placed on pensions and which tests to boycott, and more on teaching these vitals lessons in the classroom.

Susan Elkin’s latest book Unlocking the Writer in Every Child is published by Ransom.

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• Kugelschreiber

  It’s not right to blame the teachers, that is very unfair.

  We also need to ask ourselves, how often does the child’s PARENT speak to them, discuss things with them? That can make a HUGE difference to the child’s language skills. It’s not the teacher’s fault if a parent only GRUNTS at a child or tells them to SHUT UP (yes, I’ve seen them on the bus) (and I’ve known parents who sit all night in the living room in the DARK, with the only LIGHT being the one that emanates from the television)

  And a very major missing factor today is quite simply READING.

  It’s through daily READING that kids naturally pick up :

  Good English
  instinctive knowledge of grammar & punctuation
  good spelling 
  thought development
  imagination

  When I was little back in the 60’s , we ALL had to read – there wasn’t much on the telly for us back then.

  The trouble is, how WOULD you get kids today to read, with the lure of the TV?

• Kugelschreiber

  No, no, teachers SHOULD boycott SATS & other tests.
  (I’m not a classroom teacher myself, but I’ve taught a great many subjects on an individual, one to one basis)

  Tests (apart from GCSE’s etc) simply INTERRUPT the joyful, effective & creative flow of learning.

  We should go back to how it was when I was young, with the teachers setting their OWN INTERNAL tests, at TIMES deemed CORRECT by them, as judged by them depending on the individual needs & progress of their class.