Beth writes

Tag: reading

  • Beth tells all – five things that shaped my life

    girl in pastel dress with hairbow sits on floor

    Okay, this won’t be telling all but I hope some will find out more about me I think. Here come five things that shaped my life.

    1. As a child I read a lot of books and was always imagining. Books were like a lifeline for me, where I could escape on magical adventures. I was always having ideas for poems, stories, songs and plays in my head. So that is where I got my love of writing from.
    2. When I was 15, I was in intensive care on life support for 2 months. It took some work to get the images and sounds of the machines out of my head. I turned the trauma into an art piece at university – for which I got a B.
    3. I only passed my GCSE’s with 3 c’s – and got E’s for maths and science having to resit. The rest of my grades were between C and E. And I scraped through my university degree with a 2-2. So while the others were celebrating their exam results, it was harder for me. How did this shape me? It reinforced my ideas of what I was good at, and what not so.
    4. Having to face a lot of social rejection and bullying has made me more adamant to fight this. I have been quite vocal for disability and lgbtq inclusion, and challenging hate during my life.
    5. When I was 13 I found a local am dram group and joined for the pantomime. Acting has always been something I absolutely love. What a surprise I got with a birthday in pantomime week though. I got pulled back on for the birthday song.

  • What’s so amazing about words?

    A notepad with two pencils on a pink background.
    Photo by Mike Murray on Pexels.com

    Before we talk more on fonts, type color, or pictures let’s talk about words. People use words quite a lot. We use them in talking, writing, reading, listening and thinking.

    An open book with hard to decipher writing with other books behind.

    Here is an example of how not to use words well… 

    Have you ever been in a class and felt the teacher was droning on and you didn’t understand? I know for me my mind will start to wander after a few minutes. I don’t mean this to happen but when classes or meetings aren’t interacting this is what happens. How much of the lesson do you think am going to remember?

    A bored child at school stares into space
    Photo by RDNE Stock project on Pexels.com

    Even when things are written down, they don’t make sense sometimes. The sentence and paragraphs structures aren’t right, or there are a lot of words we don’t understand.

    A man struggling to read information on his laptop.
    Photo by Oladimeji Ajegbile on Pexels.com

    In all our communications throughout life, we are sending or receiving a message from someone else.

    We already looked at what happens when someone doesn’t understand. To make this easier our communications should be

    • Clear – the message should be easy for the audience to follow.
    • Concise – This means being brief and to the point. We do this through keeping our sentences short and splitting different areas into paragraphs.
    • Easy to understand – getting its meaning across to others

    Here are two examples, one follows these rules so let’s see if you can spot which.

    1st) “Due to the supermarket not having what you needed, I couldn’t get your shopping.”
    2nd) “They were out of what you need so I couldn’t buy it.”

    Which sounds better? (The answer is B)

    In summary, remember to

    • Use words your readers know, 
    • keep your message brief & get to the point,
    • Make sure the readers understand your meaning.

    Tomorrow we are going to talk about active and passive voices.