The Inspiring English Idea
The what - try to rally involvement from a bunch of celebrities/role models who are willing to selflessly inspire disengaged teenagers or adults into loving the written word, with no benefit to themselves. Oh, did I mention it may take them half-an-hour as well and, oh, did I mention there would be no financial reward?
The why - I hear all the time, ‘I hate English…’, ‘I don’t read or write nothing!’ (double negative pun intended),’I’m not going to have to read anything, am I?…’. All ridiculous, but strangely understandable, comments. Given the completely irrelevant stuff students are made to do to gain a C at GCSE, English teachers don’t stand a chance and a loathing of English is justifiable. How does being able to analyse language features and the study of spoken language help when many can’t write in sentences or make sense?
We need to separate functional English from anything academic and reignite an interest in the written word and the significance of reading to understand and writing with clarity and purpose. Just think, what would mankind be like had writing not been created? We’d probably barely be past inventing a plough and there wouldn’t be electricity, or television, or even blogging… literally, the dark ages! With digital communication the written word, albeit non-standard, has never been so powerful, and accessible.
The start of a change - imagine how these teenagers would feel if they were able to achieve something through just using the written word. Something they couldn’t otherwise achieve. My idea is for them to come up with questions they would like to ask a celebrity, the celebrity to respond and then the interview to be written up as an article - all just through writing. Good ones will be added to a blog (with celebrity final approval, of course!). See - this is what reading and writing is able to do!
Now, all I need is some famous people…
