Lesson video

Hello, hello, hello, my name is Mr Hutchinson and welcome to our final lesson all about Hinduism.

In our last lesson you wrote an essay, well done, I hope you're still feeling proud of that, I hope you're feeling impressed with yourself for writing such a long piece of writing all about our specialists, our new specialist subject of Hinduism.

You're awesome, you know so much, in today's lesson we're going to think a little bit about how to improve that essay.

You've already worked so hard in it, it's worth taking a little bit of time just to Polish it up and make it as good as it can be.

So our lesson is how can I improve my essay about Hinduism? You going to need your essay from the previous lesson, if you haven't written an essay yet, this lesson won't make a lot of sense.

And so you need to pause this video, go back to the previous lesson and make sure you've written out your full essay, get your essay in front of you now you'd also need a pen and you need your brain, and especially you need your eyes to be watching closely.

'cause you're going to try and pick out some different errors which I'm sure that you've made because literally everybody that writes makes errors as they go along, it's a perfectly natural part of writing.

What is important is that we read back, proofread carefully and catch those errors and correct them.

So we're going to have a go at doing that today.

So the first thing we were talking about is improving grammar.

Then you're going to have a chance to edit and improve your own essay.

We'll then talk about writing a closing statement at the end of each paragraph, and I'll give you a chance to add that in as well, so that you finish this lesson with a much better essay than what you start with.

I'm sure your essay is already great, but it could be even better, so that's what we'll try to do.

So how to improve grammar, the first thing is that we need capital letters and full stops.

I know that you're probably thinking, I know that I need to use capital letters and full stops, but you'll be amazed to see how often they're missed even in really great essays.

And so we're going to take a look at capital letters and full stops, especially for things like proper nouns, names of places and people and religions.

We'll then look at adding commas after fronted adverbials or clauses so we you could have verbs within those, So fronted adverbials could be an adverbial phrase, so long ago or could be an adverbial clause, so before they were written down and you can see the difference there is that an adverbial clause includes a verb so a clause has a verb and a phrase doesn't, but in both cases, they need a comma after them.

And we'll also talk about using a comma to separate other clause, not just a verbal clauses, but any clauses.

So looking out for conjunctions, those joining words and making sure that there's a comma before them.

So looking for words like but, as which, who, because to help break up our complex sentences.

So here is a paragraph, now this paragraph here has some mistakes, I'm going to let you pause the video and read through and see if you can spot any of those mistakes.

What did you notice? You might have noticed a few different kinds of mistakes, we're going to focus to begin with just at capital letters and full stops.

And I want you to remember the names of places or proper nouns, whether it's just one of those places, they're proper nouns because they're unique, they need a capital letter.

Did you spot any missing capital letters there? Hinduism is a religion that originated in the Indus Valley near the river, hold on Indus Valley is a place, this should have capital letters.

I should also have had a full stop here, look at the difference, in the Indus Valley, near the river Indus historians believe that, this is a new idea, it's a new sentence, I've got a subject Hinduism, a verb originating, and an object in the Indus Valley near the river Indus, I need a full stop there 'cause then I've got a new subject verb object.

Historians believe that Hinduism was brought to the Indus Valley by the Aryans when they migrated to the Indus Valley, and Hinduism needs a capital letter.

Now that is one of the most common mistakes within these essays, it's really easy to do, the name of that religion should have a capital letter.

So that would be one really quick check that you can do scan through all of your Hinduism's, I've made a mistake, I didn't give it a capital letter and just quickly correct it.

And that be something I bet you'll catch one or two within your essay, no problem as long as you correct them.

So you can see each of them that are spotted here, I'm sure there might even be a few more.

I need to make sure that I have improved my essay by spotting each of these different essays and correcting them.

Fine to make mistakes, just make sure you catch them.

And the longer and closer you spend proofreading, the more you'll find.

So pause the video now, go back to your essay with a pen and start scanning for those capital letters and full stop errors, and anywhere you've missed a full stop or a new sentences starting, pop in a full stop, anywhere you've missed a capital letter, especially on proper nouns make sure you add those in.

Pause the video and improve your essay by checking capital letters and full stops now.

Great work first set of checks done, and so now we're going to talk about commas coming after fronted adverbials.

So fronted adverbial is where we begin a sentence by talking, by modifying the verb, so giving more information about the verb that could be how or when or where, or how frequently the verb, the action took place.

And if we start a sentence with that fronted adverbial, then we need to just put a comma after it.

So have another read through of this paragraph and see if you can spot any fronted adverbials and see where the commas should go after them.

Let's see if you spotted them, so you can see at first, this is saying when Hinduism spread, it's spread at first, it's the time and so this is a fronted adverbial and needs a comma.

And see there's another one here, in those early years, fronted adverbial they're saying when, comma.

And then we're going into the main clause of the sentence after many years, comma If we're talking about time, if you start with the fronted adverbial you need to just pop a comma in.

So you may have include some fronted adverbials in your writing, I'm sure you did as a ready useful literary skill to begin a sentence with a fronted adverbial, so have a look now, and if you have got different start verbal, make sure you've added a comma after it.

Great work essays already much, much better, you've polished up the punctuation in terms of full stops and capital letters, especially for proper nouns, you've added in some commas when you started with fronted adverbials and you might have even missed it, didn't include any fronted adverbials, that would have been a great chance to add a few in.

So please do feel free to see a few of these ideas and think I can improve my essay by adding that, that's what great writers do.

Our last check that we're going to be doing is making sure that commas separate clauses.

So where we have two clauses within a sentence, we need to separate those with a comma to show that this is a new clause and a little tip here, one way to spot two different clauses is to look for those conjunctions, those joining words.

You've got one full idea and then a conjunction, a joining word like but or when or because, and you'll include a comma to help break up those clauses.

So have a look at this paragraph again and see if you've spotted any commas, which needs to be inserted to show that there's a clause, a new clause starting a sentence.

Let's see if you spotted the ones that I've added in, so you'll notice that first of all, there's this one here.

So historians believe that Hinduism is brought to the, look there's another area that I've spotted.

You see, I told you it's easy to do.

Hinduism needs a capital letter and that one is missing.

So I need to make sure I make that correction and I'll do that afterwards, through proofreading and editing, proofreading is so important, that's why we're doing it.

Historians believe that Hinduism was brought to the Indus Valley by the Aryans comma, when they migrated to the Indus Valley.

So because we're starting a new clause now, talking about when it happened, then I put a comma in there.

At first Hinduism spread is an oral tradition and because I'm adding more information now by using which, a comma comes to help split it up.

In those early years masters and students relied on the exact pronunciation of the teaching comma because they wanted to ensure they were passed on correctly.

Again, I'm adding more information using that subordinating conjunction because, and so I've got a comma there to help show the reader that a new clause is starting.

After many years the Aryans entered the Vedic period, which more information being add by which, and so a comma there.

And you can see I've started to get a really sophisticated sentence now, so I've got a comma to show the fronted adverbials there and a comma to help break up the different clauses.

And that gives me a nice complex sentence that reads "After many years, the Aryans entered the Vedic period, which was when Hindu teachings were written down." And it's really starting to sound like a very mature, very sophisticated, very authoritative text.

The sort of thing that you might read in a book like this one here.

So have a look at your work, see where you have a new clause starting and add a Comma in just to show that this is a new clause starting, perhaps adding some additional information.

If you haven't got any additional clauses now will be a good time to add them in, and then you can pop the comma in there straight away.

Great work, well done, so the last thing that we're going to do to improve our essay, which is already looking nicely polished now is we're going to talk about writing a closing statement.

Now this is something that whenever I'm teaching and I see essays from pupils, I noticed that this is something that's often missing, I think is the difference between really, really fantastic essays and essays that are good but not excellent.

And that because what's missing are these closing statements at the end of the paragraph that helped to build the flow.

So we had different sections and we planned it that way, what we trying to do is just like knit them together, so the essay seamlessly flows from one paragraph to another.

So, that's what closing statement does, it links two paragraphs together.

The way that they do that is they will first summarise the information that's being included in the paragraph.

And they'll then introduce what's coming next, in the next paragraph.

So if we take a look at my paragraph here, it doesn't have a closing statement.

It just ends abruptly, it gives a definition of Vedas.

It just says "Veda means knowledge of existence." Now my next paragraph, you might remember from writing your essay, the next paragraphs, all about dharma.

And so I want to sum up what's in this paragraph and introduce the idea of dharma and show how they're linked so that the essay naturally flows.

So I might write something like, I've just been talking about the Vedas, the Vedas are the oldest known religious scriptures, which contained the core beliefs about Hinduism including the concept of dharma.

And then when I go into a paragraph about dharma and then people think, Oh yeah, it's natural to be reading about this because that was just discussed right at the end of that paragraph.

So as the key skill of writing a closing statement, summarise what we've just been discussing and just introduce what's coming next so it flows naturally into it.

So a few steps to success there, and what you need to do to write this closing statements, have a go now at looking at each of your paragraphs and making sure it ends with a closing statement, that's then introduces the reader to the next paragraph.

Well done, brilliant, so you started with an excellent essay, you've now got an even better one.

By polishing it up, making sure the spelling, punctuation and grammar is really tight and also adding in some closing statements to give it a flow or sometimes called a flow.

A brilliant, brilliant work well done, and I'm really impressed with you, I'd love to see your improved essays.

And please remember that you can share everything that you do on social media, just by asking your parents or carers take a quick picture that's a really good idea, to get the praise that you deserve for the hard work that you've done.

I have really enjoyed teaching you all about Hinduism, discussing all of these ancient beliefs.

There's so much more to learn as you might imagine, With 5,000 years of history, there's so much more to learn, so many more stories, so many more gods and goddesses and avatars and scriptures and traditions and how the faith is expressed today and the diverse different ways that people express themselves as Hindu, loads to learn, and you've got a good foundation just start to ask the right sorts of questions, read about this religion, and I hope that you carry on doing that.

Thank you so much for working so hard throughout these lessons, well done for improving your essay and I'll see you next time.