Now stop giving me feeble excuses about having no time.

As a Literature teacher, I make my students write a fair bit. I also role-model for them to see how an essay should be written. It is one thing to keep on going about themes, character portrayals, mood, atmosphere and narrative structure and techniques, it is equally important to make them write.

On this I am pretty insistent. I have students who are lazy (yes I would have to use that word. One parent took offence when I told her that her son was lazy) and it is to their own peril. Unless my students write, I would not be able to correct their mistakes and help them improve. At the end of the day, it is the essays that are marked and graded. Essays are the one final form of assessment that will determine their grades. Of course for the IP/IB students, there is always the IOC but alas for the majority who are sitting for the ‘O’ and ‘N’ level exams, there is nothing else that is being assessed, save for the essays.