My name is Miss Holiday.

I'm delighted that you're joining me today.

Let's get started.

Today's lesson is the second instalment in our Writing Master unit, and it is called Creating a Sense of Voice.

By the end of today's lesson, you will be able to create a really clear sense of voice within your writing.

Here are some keywords that you'll need for today's lesson.

First of all, we've got "to condemn." We've got "optimistic," "cynical," "pessimistic," and "prospect." I'm going to put the definitions up for you one at a time, and I'm going to give you a few moments just to read those definitions as they appear.

Let's look at today's lesson outline.

In order to learn how to create that sense of voice, we first need to look at how to choose a perspective.

Then we'll look at how to craft that tone.

And then finally, we will move on to looking at using punctuation for effect.

But first, we're going to have a look at how to choose a perspective.

When responding to a task, it can actually be really powerful to write from someone else's perspective, not necessarily your own.

And this is a real opportunity for you to flex those creative muscles and demonstrate that you can think outside the box.

It does, however, still need to be a realistic piece of writing, and in order to ensure that it is realistic, when choosing a perspective, we need to consider the following questions.

What is the topic that we're writing about? Who would care about this topic? And what we mean by that is who would be really invested, who would be really passionate about this topic? And you can think about all the different possibilities here, not just the obvious ones.

Why would these people care about the topic? How might it affect them? Once we've considered all of those questions, we can make an informed decision about which perspective we would like to write from, and we'll have a little look at that in a moment.

But first, I want to test your understanding.

Which three things should you consider when choosing a perspective? Is it A, what the topic of the task is? B, who would care about this topic? C, who the reader of the task is? Or is it D, why someone would care about this topic? And I'm gonna invite you to pause the video for a few moments while you jot your answers down.

Great effort.

Congratulations to those of you that wrote A, B, and D.

It is really important to think about what the topic of the task is, who would care about the topic, and why they would care about the topic.

Well done.

We're going to have a go at choosing a perspective together.

I'd like you now to imagine that you've been asked to write an article in your local newspaper that is called "Spoiled Pooches: Man's Best Friend or Fiend." Now, before we can choose a perspective, I'd like you first to discuss together what is this article about? Who caress about this topic? Why do they care about it? And then once you've done that, I'd like you to think about, well, what tone of voice might you use for each of these people? I'm going to ask you to pause the video now while you have your quick discussions.

Jot some ideas down and we'll come back to share our thoughts.

Some really great discussions there.

I'm going to share some of the best answers that I heard.

When we're thinking about who cares, as I said before, it's great to think outside the box.

However, it's also great and easy to start with the obvious.

So who might care about this article, "Spoiled Pooches?" Well, first of all, somebody who hates dogs would definitely have an opinion about this article because they might be really sick of seeing pooches in prams everywhere, pampered pooches, dogs in clothes, and social media pooches who have their own Instagram accounts.

And if we were to write from this person's perspective, we would want to adopt that really outraged and quite condemning tone.

Somebody else who would quite obviously care about this topic might be a dog owner.

Now, this dog owner loves their dog.

They don't think there's any such thing as a spoiled pooch, and they regard their dog as their child.

And so they don't think that you can actually spoil a dog.

And for this person, we might adopt a much more affectionate tone and a more positive tone surrounding the subject of spoiled pooches.

However, there might be another dog owner, perhaps a dog owner who's tired of the pressure of spoiling their dog and constantly feels like they're competing with other dog owners to provide their dog with the best care possible.

Perhaps they're spending loads of money on spoiling their dog and they think that it's gone a little bit too far.

Now, for this dog owner, we might use a really annoyed tone.

And the reason I wanted to include this second dog owner is to show you that actually, even though the same character might care about the situation, that there might be two versions of that character who actually have really opposite opinions on the topic.

Now, another person who might care about this topic would be a vet, somebody who we assume loves animals.

Now this vet really loves dogs, but they're actually a bit concerned and they're thinking that actually I want to raise awareness of the dangers of spoiling your pets, because actually spoiling your dog too much might cause dog aggression and all the problems that go with that.

So if we were to write from this vet's perspective, we would be looking to adopt a more concerned, but also quite informative tone.

And finally, and this is what I was talking about when I said you can really think outside the box here and flex those creative muscles, we could actually be really clever here and pretend to be somebody pretending to be a dog.

So the article will be written by somebody, a writer, who is actually pretending to be that dog.

And perhaps this dog thinks that they really enjoy being pampered, that there shouldn't be any restrictions upon how much their owners could, should spoil them.

They perhaps think they're entitled to that level of affection.

And actually, if we were to write from this person's perspective who is pretending to be that dog, we'd have this really smug tone of voice.

We might use lots of humour, okay? And that would be the more creative approach to this task, but it would also be difficult, so you'd have to be very sure that you could pull this perspective off if you were going to give it a go.

Once we've considered all the possible perspectives that we could write from, it is then your job to weigh up and evaluate which perspective you feel that you could write the most convincingly.

You need to take into account the linguistic choices that you might make and how you could demonstrate the most flare in conveying that perspective.

I want to stress here that there is no right perspective and that it is entirely your choice which perspective you choose to write from.

So now that we've had a go at choosing a perspective together, it's over to you.

I'd like you to imagine that this is your task.

A blogger recently wrote, "Students should not be able to resit exams. If they cannot pass the first time, they should not be allowed to have a second go." Now you are going to mind map who cares about this topic.

And then you're going to think, "Well, if I was to write from this person's perspective, what tone of voice would I need to adopt?" Let's look at one example together and then you can finish the mind map.

So I think the most obvious person who might care about this is, perhaps, a student.

This student feels that exams are really nerve wracking and that they add unnecessary pressure and anxiety to their day.

This student feels that it's unfair, that if they perform poorly on one day that their future might be ruined.

If we were going to write from this student's perspective, we will be looking to adopt really concerned, but deeply passionate tone of voice as this student's really, really keen to convey the fact that they don't think that their whole schooling career should be limited down to one exam day.

I'm now going to pass the button to you and ask you to finish the mind map.

Whilst you do so, I'd encourage you to pause the video so that you can really concentrate on looking at all those different perspectives of people that would care about this topic.

Some really good effort there, and well done for giving it such a good go.

Now, this was the example we looked at together.

The student who finds exams nerve wracking and thinks their future might be ruined, so we would be adopting that concern term.

However, I definitely heard some of you identify that actually not all students may feel this way and that we might have another student who feels that they've worked really hard and doesn't want to compete against other people in their future who've had that second chance at that examination.

Now, this student, if they were to write the article, would be really harsh and condemning.

So that's the tone we would want to adopt here.

The second person who would definitely care about this is a teacher.

They perhaps want the best life chances for their students and feel that students should be given the opportunity to reset their exams if it doesn't quite go the way they wanted it to the first time.

Now, this teacher, as they really care about their students, would have this really optimistic and quite encouraging tone of voice.

Now again, there's always two sides to every coin, and actually we might have another teacher who might think that exams and resitting devalues the exam system and takes away from the true nature of public examinations.

They might feel that allowing students to resit exams teaches them that they don't need to listen in class.

And therefore, if we were to adopt this teacher's perspective, we would be looking to adopt that really condemning and harsh tone of advice, as this is clearly a teacher who doesn't agree that students should be allowed to sit exams. And lastly, we might have parents that would care, okay? They might not have got the opportunity to reset exams themselves.

You know, they might be one of these people who thinks that young people have it really easy these days and that life just isn't fair.

And if we were to adopt this parent's perspective, then we might be looking to create that really critical tone of voice because this parent clearly doesn't agree that students should be allowed to reset examinations.

A massive well done if you picked up on any of those other perspectives.

And now on to our second learning cycle, what we've really delve deeper into how to craft the tone once we've chosen our perspective.

Now, we know that perspective is the writer's point of view.

It's what they think and what they feel.

Voice is how they get that across, how they write their point of view.

And tone comes within that.

It's the mood of someone's voice.

For example, if we were to write our article about spoiled pooches and we were to write it from the perspective of a concerned vet, our voice would be informative, because remember, we're trying to tell people about the dangers of spoiling your pets, aggressive dogs, et cetera.

But our tone would also be concerned because we're concerned about the long-term impact of spoiling pets.

When crafting tone you've got to think about every single word that you choose because individual word choices, they're what creates the tone.

And actually every single word that you write down counts towards crafting that tone.

I'm going to show you an example of this.

Here's the opening sentence from the article on spoiled pooches.

"We hadn't even got the mutt yet." I'd now like to discuss what do you think this person's perspective on spoiled pooches might be and how would you describe their tone? I'm going to give you a few seconds to pause the video and have your discussions before we share our ideas.

Excellent discussions and well done to those of you that identified that there is a distinctly negative tone here.

This is likely going to be our first dog owner who is tired of competing with others and feels that their dog has privileges that even they don't have themselves.

Now before, I mentioned about how individual word choices are absolutely instrumental in crafting tone, and I'm going to show you an example of that now.

What I'm going to do is I'm going to change the word "mutt" for other words to describe a dog.

For each word change I'd like you to consider how the tone changes with it.

"We hadn't even got the dog yet." "We hadn't even got the puppy yet." "We hadn't even got the pup yet." "We hadn't even got the pooch yet." Again, I'm gonna invite you to pause the video for a second while you think about how each of those word changes changes the tone.

Well done.

You're absolutely right.

You might have noticed that each of these words gets progressively more affectionate.

So we started with dog, which is quite neutral, and we went from dog to puppy to pup to pooch, which is really affectionate and quite informal.

So clearly we went from somebody who feels quite neutrally about dogs to somebody who's really fond of dogs and doesn't feel that there's anything wrong with spoiling their dog.

Let's have a look at that opening in context.

Here's the first paragraph of our response to our article on spoiled pooches.

I'm going to read it to you, and as I read it I'd like you to think about how is that really pessimistic and cynical tone created? "We hadn't even got the mutt yet, and it had already cost me four beds, three coats, two collars, and one massive vet bill.

Sounds like the worst Christmas song ever, right? I couldn't actually bear to think about Christmas, if I'm honest.

The thought of buying that dog the silver diamante-studded colour my wife had been eyeing up since before we even spoke her into existence was too much.

How fitting, a silver colour to match the silver spoon that had been shoved in her mouth the day she was born." Let's have a look at how that really pessimistic tone is created here.

So the first line speaks a thousand words.

This choice of the word "mutt." Now a mutt is a stray, unloved, uncared-for dog.

By choosing that noun, "mutt," the writer is conveying to us their distaste for their dog and their lack of affection towards it, and perhaps how fed up and frustrated they are with the constant expectation that they should be spoiling their dog when they clearly don't want to.

Secondly, we've got a very harsh choice of pronouns from this writer.

They're referring to their dog as "it" or "that dog." The fact that they've used "it" and "that" show us that really condemning and cynical tone, as again, this person clearly doesn't believe that a dog is worth spoiling.

We've also got a very sarcastic tone permeating this piece of writing, and that's most obvious in the use of idiom.

Now, the silver spoon idiom is one that is used to indicate privilege.

Often privileged people are said to have had silver spoons in their mouths when they were born, and here the writer uses this and attributes it to his dog.

So again, clearly this person is quite unhappy with the fact that their dog is as spoiled as she clearly is, and feels that spoiling dogs is counterproductive and unnecessary.

And finally, we see this really annoyed and pessimistic tone of voice through the choice of verb here, this "shoved in her mouth." Again, that word "shoved" is a really careless and quite aggressive word, and it's reflective of the writer's attitudes towards their dog.

Clearly, they perhaps aren't feeling quite as affectionate about their dog as their wife does, and this is reflected in their choice of verb.

Now all of these word choices contribute to creating that really quite condemning and harsh and pessimistic tone here.

Let's check your understanding.

I'd like you to choose the sentence here which creates the most positive tone.

Is it A, "She was very entertaining, in her own way." B, "She was entertaining, to say the least." C, "She really was so very entertaining." Or is it D, "She was, shall we say, entertaining." I'm going to encourage you to pause the video and choose the sentence which creates the most positive tone.

Congratulations to those of you that chose C.

Well done.

"She really was so very entertaining." There is genuine enthusiasm there.

What I'd like you to do now is I'd like you to rewrite this paragraph, but I'd like you to create a much more affectionate and optimistic tone towards the dog and clear support for spoiling her.

Now, this is the same paragraph that we've just read, except that you're going to be flipping the perspective.

In order to do so, you need to keep the details the same, but you've got to make sure that you change the pronouns, the verbs, and the nouns into more positive ones.

I'd like you to pause the video while you have a go at this task before we share our ideas together.

Excellent work.

Let's have a look at what you could have written.

"She hadn't actually come home with us yet, but I'd already made sure she had everything she needed, four beds, three coats, two collars, and one appointment at the vet.

The thrill of buying more accessories for her made me feel she was already here.

I was already looking forward to the prospect of wrapping up the stylish silver diamante-studded collar I'd spied in Fluffy Woofy and stashing it under our tree for her to tear open on Christmas morning.

This Christmas was going to be so much more magical with our little angel to spoil." What I'd like you to do now is choose one feature of this model paragraph that you think contributes to the more positive and affectionate tone, and I'd like you to explain its effect.

Again, I'm going to give you a minute to pause the video and have that discussion before we share our answers.

Some great discussion there.

I'm going to share some of the answers that I liked the best.

First of all, that really obvious swapping of the pronouns, it for she, okay, really humanises the dog a little bit more and shows that affection that the owner clearly feels towards it.

Secondly, we've got much more positive words here.

"The thrill", you know, "stylish," "looking forward," all of these phrases contribute to creating that more optimistic tone and showing her affection for her dog.

It's also the fact that we've added in that she needed these things, four beds, three coats, two colours, and that vet appointment.

The previous owner was stating that these were all unnecessary things that he had to buy his dog, whereas this owner feels that she needs them and is happy to provide them for her, showing that she didn't mind spoiling her dog.

And lastly, that reference to the dog as a little angel.

Again, the connotations of angel, pure perfection, you know, shining.

So again, we see that this dog really is the apple of her owner's eye, and this owner's really fond of this animal and want spoil her.

Onto the third part of our lesson for today where we're going to look at using punctuation for effect.

Punctuation is so important.

It's my favourite part of writing because it brings our voice to life.

I'm going to show you some examples of this in action.

And for each one, I'd like you to decide how the punctuation shapes the voice.

What does it do to the tone? "Homework, the roots of all our unhappiness." "I'm not entirely sure which of these is the lesser evil." "I am certain that the many students who voted to abolish school uniform would love to hear the many very valid reasons for their request being revoked." I'd encourage you to pause the video now and take a few moments to think about what the punctuation is doing to the tone and how it's shaping that voice.

Well done for those discussions.

Really fruitful and really interesting.

Let's have a look at some of the answers.

So in all of these examples, the use of the dash, ellipses, and inverted commas affects the tone and the voice.

First of all, we've got "Homework, the root of all our unhappiness." And here we've used the dash to add the humour because it creates that little pause between our little joke and the topic here.

Secondly, in this sentence, "I'm not entirely sure which of these is the lesser evil." The use of ellipses here creates that dramatic pause while we think about the question, "Well, which is the lesser evil?" So it gives us time in which to reflect upon what has just been said.

And finally, in this last example, our use of inverted commas shows that sarcastic tone and it shows our disapproval of these valid reasons of our request being revoked.

And we get the sense here that this person doesn't agree with the reasons and thinks that it's outrageous that the request has been revoked.

Let's have a look at dashes in a little bit more detail.

We can use dashes to add humorous comments.

For example, "It is high time that we tackle the problem that that strikes raw fear and contempt into the hearts of all upstanding, moral citizens and threatens civilization as we know it.

This issue is train fare evasion." Now, I'd like you to discuss what effect does introducing the dash have here? I'll read it to you again.

"It is high time that we tackle the problem that strikes raw fear and contempt into the hearts of all upstanding, moral citizens and threatened civilization as we know it.

Train fair evasion." I'd like you to pause the video while you have your discussions about the effect of the dash here.

Some great discussion, and well done to those of you who identified that actually using the dash here cuts the tension away and we get to the punchline much quicker because it's introduced more quickly.

Let's test your understanding.

Which of these sentences uses a dash effectively? Is it A, "Museums, where interest goes to die." B, "Hospital food makes me sick.

Well, more sick." "Moths, they only come out at night." I'd like you to pause the video while you jot your answer down.

Congratulations to those of you that identified that A and B are the sentences that use the dash the most effectively.

Well done.

We can also use ellipses in our work to add dramatic pauses.

Again, I'll show you an example and I'd like you to think about what does the use of ellipses here force you to do when reading this? I'll read it to you.

"I cannot begin to imagine the heartache of being instantaneously stripped of all comforts, loved ones, snatched away, belongings destroyed, home collapsed.

Can you?" Again, I'd like you to pause the video and have a conversation about what effect does that ellipsis have here and what are we forced to do? And well done to those of you that identified that actually the ellipsis here forces us to pause for a moment and consider what the scenario presented to us would be like.

You know, what would it be like to have your loved one snatched away, your belongings destroyed, and your home collapsed? So here we can see that ellipses can be used really emotively to give audiences and readers the time to reflect on the emotional situations that you might present them with.

Let's check for your understanding.

True or false, ellipses can only be used at the end of a sentence.

I'll just give you a minute to pause the video and write your answer down.

And a massive congratulations to the people who identified that it is, in fact, false.

What I'm going to ask you to do now is justify your answer.

So once the options have appeared on screen, I'd encourage you to pause the video again while you decide which justification is the right one.

Again, well done.

So impressed.

It was B.

You can use ellipses in the middle of a sentence as long as you complete the sentence afterwards.

Well done.

And now onto the last piece of punctuation we're going to explore today, and my definitely my favourite, inverted commas.

So you can use inverted commas to imply sarcasm or disapproval of someone else's ideas.

Here's an example.

If we take this sentence here, "Every day I hear about the many benefits of homework." It's a good sentence.

But what happens if we place the word "benefits" in inverted commas? How does the tone change here? Well done to those of you that identified that actually, in just adding those inverted commas, we have completely changed the perspective of the piece from positive, so in favour of homework, to being totally against homework.

And we've really created a sarcastic and critical tone here.

If I read this to you again, you'll be able to hear it.

"Every day I hear about the many benefits of homework." Let's check your understanding of inverted commas.

Which two reasons might you use inverted commas? Is it A, "To indicate someone else's ideas, e.

g, quotes?" Is it B, "To show you disagree with someone else's ideas?" Or is it C, "To show that you disagree with someone else's tone?" Again, I'd like you to pause the video, please, and think about which two reasons might you use inverted commas for.

Well done to those of you that identified that it is A and B.

We use inverted commas to show that something is someone else's idea, such as a quote, or to show that we disagree with someone else's idea.

Well done.

Onto the final task of today's lesson.

I'm going to show you three paragraphs, and I'd like you to add dashes, ellipses, and inverted commas into these paragraphs to emphasise the humour, sarcasm, or dramatic pauses necessary.

Let's have a look at them.

So paragraph one, "Vandalism is rapidly becoming one of the most prevalent forms of antisocial behaviour, with a marked rise in the number of reports about graffiti.

I guess we have Banksy to thank for that." Paragraph two.

"Now, you might question, what is the harm in the rising rates of graffiti? Is it the damage to historic property? No, the real problem with this artistic expression is far more bleak." And finally, "The pictures just aren't getting any better.

You think that by now these little vandals might at least have developed some artistic flare." I'd now like to invite you to pause the video while you have a go at adding the punctuation into the three paragraphs.

Really great effort there.

That was a difficult task and I'm really impressed by the effort that you've demonstrated.

Let's have a look at some of the answers.

So first of all, in the first paragraph, we should have added in a dash between the words "graffiti" and "I," because that second little bit of the sentence, "I guess we have Banksy to thank for that," is a little bit sarcastic and humorous, and therefore it needs to be foregrounded by a dash to have maximum impact.

So well done if you identified that that should have been a dash there.

Secondly, we should have been popping in some inverted commas around the words "artistic expression" to indicate that actually don't view graffiti as artistic expression, though some other people might.

We could have also added in some ellipses after the word "bleak" to force our audience or reader to consider what the real problem with graffiti is before we tell them.

And finally, again, some ellipsis would've gone a long way here at the end of the sentence to create that sarcastic and reflective tone.

Well done if you managed to identify where the punctuation needed to be added.

That was a hard task and you've done really well.

In summary, when creating a sense of voice, you don't always have to write from your own perspective.

And actually it can be far marvel to write from somebody else's.

It's worth considering all the possible perspectives you could write from before evaluating which would allow you to be the most creative and demonstrate the most flair.

Remember that the best pieces of writing are those with a clear sense of voice, and that when crafting that voice, your tone of voice has to match the perspective that you are writing from.

Our language choices contribute to the tone of our writing, and every word matters.

And finally, punctuation should be used to characterise the voice and craft of your writing.

Thank you for joining me today and well done for all your amazing suggestions.

Don't forget that we've got our exit quiz where you can test what you've learned today, and I'm really looking forward to seeing you for lesson three in our Writing Master's unit next time.

See you later.