What Dungeons and Dragons can teach writers about collaboration and crafting narrative, characters and worlds. Like an entire generation of nerdy 80s kids, American writer Alexander Chee spent whole weekends of his childhood playing Dungeons & Dragons.
"My friends would come over and we'd play late into the night, in the basement of my parents' home," Chee told Claire Nichols on The Book Show. "This continued well into high school, it was pretty all-consuming ... [and] I do think that it had a profound impact on me becoming a writer. " Chee, author of How to Write an Autobiographical Novel and The Queen of the Night, is far from the only writer who has been obsessed with, and shaped by, the fantasy role-playing tabletop game. 'Iso' named Australia's 2020 word of the year, beating coronavirus-related terms 'bubble' and 'COVID normal' - ABC News. The coronavirus pandemic has not only changed our way of life, it has changed our way of speaking — infecting the national lexicon with hundreds of new words and phrases.
Key points: Lexicographers says "iso" is a particularly Australian take on pandemic languageThe Australian National Dictionary Centre says most of the new words it collected this year related to COVID-19The only shortlisted term unrelated to coronavirus was "Black Summer", a reference to the 2019-20 bushfire season The Australian National Dictionary Centre has recognised the dominance of COVID-19 by naming "iso", an abbreviation of "isolation", as the word of the year. The word was chosen from a shortlist of five expressions, only one of which was unrelated to the virus.
That term was "Black Summer", a reference to the catastrophic 2019-20 bushfire season. If public speaking terrifies you, you're not alone — but there's plenty you can do about it. Updated about 2 hours agoFri 28 Feb 2020, 11:39pm First my mouth dries up.
I forget what I want to say and my heart beats so violently I wonder if this is what a heart attack feels like. The Stranger, Australia's answer to Doctor Who, premieres on ABC iview after decades in the vaults - RetroFocus. Posted about 4 hours agoSat 1 Feb 2020, 8:58pm Way back when Doctor Who's TARDIS was only just taking off, an Australian TV series was exploring the science fiction genre.
The Stranger was Australia's first locally-produced science fiction television show and one of the first Australian series to be sold overseas. It was immediately popular after it first aired on the ABC on April 5, 1964, but has since faded into obscurity. While Doctor Who developed a cult following over the following decades, The Stranger sat untouched in the ABC's film archives. But thanks to a team of dedicated film archivists, the series will have a new life after being remastered for ABC iview. Could you eat the bum out of an elephant? Decoding Australia's colourful food slang. Posted about an hour agoMon 23 Dec 2019, 10:30pm. Deep reading has become a lost art as digital screens take over, but you can retrain your brain.
Updated earlier today at 12:30amSat 21 Dec 2019, 12:30am.
Genre Worksheets. Genre refers to the category in which a text belongs.
Most texts belong to a main genre (like fiction or nonfiction) and a subgenre (like fantasy or biography). Understanding genre will help you to form expectations about a work. You will also be able to recognize when an author is playing with those expectations. Here are some worksheets to give students practice with genre and subgenre. These worksheets are available in RTF format (for editing), PDF format (for printing), and Ereading Worksheets (for completing on computers, tablets, or phones). Genre Worksheet 1 – Read the descriptions of the texts. Genre Worksheet 2 – Choose the genre and subgenre in which the story most likely belongs.
Genre Worksheet 3 – Read descriptions of texts written for a variety of purposes and then determine the genre and subgenre based on the provided details. Five home-based activities to improve your writing - Learn English - Education. As adults, many of us are learning English on our own.
How can we continue to improve our language skills in a situation like this? Stefanie Lia is an English school teacher in the Australian state of New South Wales. She told ABC Splash how she helps students develop their language skills in the classroom. Below are some of her top tips to help you improve your writing skills. Oh or zero? When the evolution of language clashes with linguistic purism. Posted about 3 hours agoTue 22 Jan 2019, 9:00pm.
Can you spell like a primary school student? Premier's Spelling Bee crowns best in NSW. Posted Fri at 8:18amFri 2 Nov 2018, 8:18am Even if you're clever enough to know the meaning of curmudgeonly, the ability to spell it is a step beyond.
Six Aussie authors tackle the question: Should you only write what you know? - RN. Updated 46 minutes agoThu 28 Jun 2018, 2:20am 'Write what you know' is advice that's often given to creative writing students to help them overcome the dreaded blank page.
It's good advice — but it also feeds into an issue many authors face about whose stories they should and shouldn't tell. Lionel Shriver, the US author of We Need To Talk About Kevin, famously stepped into this murky pond in her keynote speech at the 2016 Brisbane Writers Festival, where she lambasted the strictures of identity politics and its implied limitations on writers. Aussies accents differ from Canadian, American, British and Kiwi. Here's why. Opinion Posted Why do Aussies have a different accent to Canadians, Americans, the British and New Zealanders? The answer, it seems, has a lot to do with who you hang out with as a kid. The accent you have depends on the people you grew up with and the history of the place that you live in. Writing About Writing (And Occasionally Some Writing): Concrete Imagery (Revision) One of the first lessons a starting creative writer needs to learn--and often one of the lessons they still struggle with after years--is the power of concrete imagery* over abstractions.
Read any fiction from someone starting out, and there will be a lot of words dedicated to telling the reader how they should feel or huge swaths in the character's head devoted to their. Big, complex, abstract feelings sweep over these characters and they spend pages wallowing in them with an emo angst that will make your readers wish Donnie Darko might stop by to bring on the verve. *Imagery in this case includes sounds, smells, tastes, and tactile sensations.
Year 8 Archives. Antigrams. From mispronunciation to malapropisms: The horrors and pleasures of misused words. Opinion. Where do new words come from? - Marcel Danesi. Find the creation of new words fascinating? Click here to find out more. How new words are born is a great article on this topic. What are the origins of some words that are commonly used? The Oxford Living Dictionary that provides word origins will help you find out. Loanwords are those words borrowed from another language. Help with transcribing and annotating. Differentiated Reading Instruction Worksheets and Activities. Are you a teacher who has suddenly been told that you need to “differentiate” your reading, English, or language arts instruction? Verb Tense Worksheets. Saving Fluffy The Bunny (Future Progressive Tense Worksheets) – The science teacher is planning on dissecting Fluffy the Bunny in science class tomorrow. Free Reading Activities & Resources.
Language Arts for K-12 - Phonics, Grammar and Vocabulary. Complex Sentences & Compound Sentences: How to Tell the Difference. Iris Reading. English - Knowledge of Language. Why is there a "b" in doubt? - Gina Cooke. This is a map of the wheel-ruts of modern English. Does grammar matter? - Andreea S. Calude. Spoken language has been neglected and marginalized for much of our history on account of its perceived inferiority in comparison to written language. Written language was historically regarded as the language of the ‘learned,’ given that few people could read or write. 18 Fun and Simple Creative Writing Activities. Some of you teachers may be a John Keating in the making. Adjusting Lessons for ESL/ELL Students. Sentence Length. Today's topic is sentence length.