0:00 – Introduction
2:00 – Is what you learn in school relevant to the real world?
5:03 – The Importance of Basic Writing Skills
12:09 – Writing for Different Audiences
17:27 – GAME: Name 3 random jobs
25:43 – Fringe Benefits of Writing
36:48 – Writing To Make Money
45:33 – How to Improve Your Writing (5 quick tips)
53:00 – Outro

Introduction

we did our um goals episode back in January yeah and one of the goals forboth of us was the personal website which included personalblogs we didn’t discuss it we just both decided that that’s what we were going to start to do yeah I think I’ve I’vealways wanted to maintain a Blog and I’ve done it a few times and then I just I just give up I just decide nah I’m notgoing to do it anymore well is that just down to the well their timing effort cuz we alsohave to run blogs for here as well for for the company well which is where alove of your it’s like the effort of actually in in order to write start awebsite you do need to put effort into it regularly otherwise it’s sort ofpointless so you have to keep fueling it same with anything and I sort of haddidn’t do that for a long period of time I I started it and then did a few blog posts then I decidedno I don’t think I can be bothered anymore and change but is that becauseyou I know you I know you enjoy writing yeah more so than I do yeah um butyou’ve I guess it goes from being a hobby to like a chore is that is that the reason Isuppose so yeah because then I go oh I’ve got this to maintain now this is a new child but constantly feed I’m notI’m not willing to keep feeding this child just let it dielike a dead tree um yeah I think it takes quite a lot of commitment to keep writing I meanI’ve already fallen behind my like one blog a week thing I’ve been good withthat I’ve sort of kept doing it I I literally just sat down between 1: and4: on Friday and then right yeah but then we’ve also started our own personal YouTube channel and like editing wisethat’s my time for doing that so it’s hard to do everything what do you think of this um

Is what you learn in school relevant to the real world?

a lot of students say that what they learn in school won’t apply to the real world so Shakespeare Christmas Carolsomeone said it on Saturday I know a few people that have said like sort of why do I need to knowthis in this day and age maybe that’s an important thing that we need to answerbecause I think most and Jordan Peterson brought that up um we tell children towrite an essay or we tell students to write an essay or to write something butwe never explain why you writing it in the first place so that’s why I thoughtit was a good ide that’s why we thought it was a good idea to start this podcast um and and talk about writing because itis an important question why why write in the first place what’s the point of it why why learn Shakespeare why learnwhy read the Christmas Carol and other things he Christmas car I mean the Christmas car the Christmas car so yeahso what your what are your like initial thoughts on that I’m going to say it’sit’s actually massively important um because well first of allum I think it furnishes the Mind well if you if you study something like a Christmas Carol or Shakespeare orsomething like that it’s part of our cultural heritage mhm and part of our history literature that kind of thingit’s the Cannon as it were now if you want to deviate from the cannon thenthat’s up to you but you should at least know the cannon you should know the thebasics of you know culture History Literature um if you don’t then you’llstand out as a bit of a sore thumb and I think that’s actually a good reason to learn something because it’spart of your identity to some extent I don’t think many I don’t think many people will feel that way now especiallylike okay so what what are your thoughts on like the it’s essentially a differentlanguage like how it’s written so what are your thoughts on that well compared to how we talk now why why why exciseyour mind in any way like because it’s difficult that’s a good reason to do itin the first place for just for growth purposes yeah it’s like why learn Latin dead language why learn it it’s goodmental exercise there’s there’s value in just doing that yeah true and also there’s there’ssort of fringe benefits of learning um something that you mightthink is disconnected from everything else so I think my vocabulary has been helped Along by studying Latin forinstance like because you know the roots of words so you understand where they come from thus you’re able to retain andum improve your vocabulary but let’s take it back to sort ofthe the basics yeah so why why learn how how to like spell and yeah pretty

The Importance of Basic Writing Skills

much especially with everything that’s out at the moment yeah um AI wi likelike what’s what’s the what’s the need when a couple of prompts can just youknow throw up an entire fully uh fully sorted out email for exampleyou’ll get found out some point if if if you if you wereto go through life like just it’s a bit like um putting a maths equation intochat GPT or something like that imagine someday it’s able to answer that kind of thing though it’s kind of not at themoment that not that well um no there are other ones that can do it though yeah I’ve seen them but you’ll get foundout it’s that simple but if it but if it accomplishes the task say you’re complaining to your land Lord orwhatever yeah doesn’t matter it doesn’t matter if they find find out it’s justthe task is done right so how would you know if the task was carried outcorrectly like how would you be able to assess or gauge whether yes so you’re saying you kind of need like a roughidea of what you’re looking for yeah like AI tools are only as powerful as your ability to to prompt them yeah toprompt them and also evaluate the their success in producing somethingthey’ve done they’ve done studies on that I think um I can’t remember the study but they they’ve done studieswhere they took like um I think it was actually likeprogrammers or like coders or something like that like quite difficult jobs andthey took them from the sort of they took more able ones and less able ones and how and compared how they use theseAI tools but it was still super important because for them to check whatthe AI had produced because the ones who just relied purely on AI made a lot ofmistakes the ones who didn’t who relied on AI and then also checked it carefullythey had a much higher success rate with whatever task they were doing so I thinkthat’s very much the same thing with like get in something to write an email you still got to check for it we’ve donethat so h with like okay how would you say this into chat GPT or something likethat and then you’ve still got to make a lot of changes to it to actually workhow important is that sort of well writing in say I don’t know a corporate job sayyou want to like get an internship at a bank or you know a graduate scheme or something like that that’s that’snot I would say not directly related to to writing how what I’ve already I’veI’ve always said to students like for instance whenever they do an exam or write an essay or something like thatmhm writing is actually perfecting the art of presenting a certain form ofyourself like you’ve got to show yourself to be a top candidate if you have those little tinymistakes might not seem that important but they still influence people’sfeelings towards you you that’s under whether whether rightly or wrongly that’s what happens it’s likean unconscious thing yeah okay fine um so if you have a CV if you have a coverletter there are mistakes in it and it’s not clear what you’re talking about especially I think that’s the main thingif you’re not able to express your ideas clearly then how are you going to get a job at how you going to get a top jobanywhere even if you’re like a builder or you it’s there’s still an art of communication in it there like if you’renot able to communicate ideas clearly then people won’t buy into it yeah Ithink that’s probably the key thing you’re communicate communicating your ideas now I I wanted to get better atcommunicating my thoughts by do writing um but the other day you said to me umyou said I’m quite good at explaining what I’m thinking or something something along those lines yeah and I thought I was okay but I didn’t realize like thatyou thought I was like actually quite good at it I feel like I I felt like I wasn’t maybemy thought maybe I have maybe I explain what I’m thinking but my thoughts are more complex than I mean you you’veimproved at it like it’s not it’s I don’t I wouldn’t say it was like something that was it’s not an no I knowit’s it’s come with time but I still wanted to improve more and that’s probably probably the main reason why I started writing I think when you getreally good when when you do a lot of writing you become less concerned aboutPE when it becomes an art form it’s a bit different and for me yeah CU it’s like an interpretation rather sometimesI’m really happy when I write something slightly ambiguous because it’sthought-provoking yeah thought provoking and that’s kind of what I’m aiming for it depends what what your aim is yeahyou’re you don’t want to be doing that like in a direct email it’s like what you’re good at is like if you if you do some marketing copy or something likethat saying what you want to say really quick quickly and efficiently and which iswhich is really good like that that that is an that’s one of the most important reasons to learn how to write and umit’s it’s one such use but then there’s also writing to entertain which is different differentpurposes yeah different um okay well I mean it’s like you know um if you watcha comic on on stage something that they won’t always go directly to the punchline yeah no no no they they’ll and they’ll take you on a journey that’s one of the one of the one of the likethings is sometimes going to a thing going to like a a point MeanderMeandering away for such a long time that the audience forgets where they were and they do this whole Meanderthing they go yeah so I was yeah I was in the coffee shop and then everyone just bursts out laughing because I actually forgot that they’ve taken themon this entire Journey away background again it’s a bit like old Simpsons Simpsons episodes where it’s like theytake you on a little journey and oh oh yeah it was about this and was like how did we get to that yeah it’s a comedicstrategy yeah yeah so same as like rule of three or like call back humor andyeah I think I think for me um and it gets in sometimes it gets in the way ofwhat I want to produce is different from what sometimes I produce professionally so as a writer you need to learn howto change how you write according to the situation according to the audienceaccording to what you’re trying to get across yeah so this was going to wasgoing going to bring me on to this next uh next point which is writing for different

Writing for Different Audiences

audiences which is I guess what we’re talking about now um so let’s say youwere writing to complain to let’s let’s um let’s gowith the current situation that we’re in complain to complain to a landlordor they won’t listen to you complain to um an estate agent for a leak that’shappened in your property that was not your fault but from uh the upstairsbuilding which is not related to you at all yeah um that they don’t want to fix yeah then then obvious obviouslylike you want to be first of all direct explain the issue mhm um and that goesinto like explaining things with Clarity is not something that people can immediately do it takes a lot ofpractice ice some people it take to it better but I think it’s mainly practiceum like you you’ve had sort of conversations with little kids and they’re trying to explain something it’s like doesn’t make sense like what you’reto say um they say a lot without saying anything yes exactly they’re Meandering around the point but with a complaintletter or something like that you’ve got to be very clear about what the problem is so communicate the problem yeahcommunicate the problem um you you don’t want to beud rude you know rude but you want to youwant to bring across the seriousness of yeah direct but not rude yes the secondthe second you’re rude it’s this the whole um How to Win Friends and Influence People yeah like if secondyou’re rude they they’ll yeah but also you also want to aim at some form ofresolution like what will actually make you happy like it’s all very well having a complaint but what are you what youtrying to get out of it like what’s is there some compensation or is there someum some fix yeah that they can implement or put into place so those all have tobe super clear when you make a complaint and I think it’s it’s askillful life isn’t it so yeah and it’s something that you’d learn in gcscEnglish although we don’t do enough of it and that’s something that I really dislike about English language soEnglish literature fine study shakes SP study your text that kind of thing butEnglish language is not nearly enough functional English in it not it’s it’sway to like just to demonstrate like why it’s problematic you’d think that thehighest average grade would be in language over literature right becauseit should be dealing with easier things it should be yeah but it isn’t like English language grades tend to be lowerthan engl English literature grades that tells me that something’s wrong yeah which is which is kind of where westarted the conversation is like why do we need to learn about shakespare and all that sort of stuff I think this Imean obviously there’s there’s it has its place but things like this letter of complaints blah blah is more yeahrelevant they you like you you will 100% need it at some point they need to have a lot more functional English in Englishclasses for GCC students because that’s a really good time to actually introducethem to things like like something that comes up a lot and every single year is when they’re making applications toUniversity or something like that doing personal statements they’ve never written anything like that before how dothey do it so so that’s yeah so that’s a different purpose I wanted to run through a few purposes so writing to getlike the leak sorted or or something like letter of complaint what give me some other so persuade informdescribe um what’s the other one speech is kind of pers I suppose so um but inday-to-day life what are we GNA you’re mainly dealing with persuading and informing those I think those twofunctional uses are the most important so so informing that could be just filling outa form can you fill it out properly a lot of people can’t fill out forms properly a lot of people read forms andthey don’t go okay I don’t know what that is um you’ve probably filled out forms so you’re like don’t know what’shappening there’s been some yeah so we that that’s why I think we don’t do enough we don’t do nearly enoughfunctional English in the classroom and that is a fair point um in favor whatstudents would say so I think they’re right when when will I use this wellwe’re not doing what they should be doing some in some respects um so I’d be sort of in favorof doing a lot more functional English in class I know they do things likewrite a letter to the MP stuff like that which is yeah okay but it’s debates forand against and all that but probably still not enough um and it probablyshould be assessed more because you know you you can judgehow effective a complaint letter is and that kind of thing like a let’s let’s say like a in fact no let’s let’s go on

GAME: Name 3 random jobs

to the next thing which I wanted to do was a quick a quick game three random jobs I’m going towrite down three random jobs you’re going to write down three random jobs we’re not going to it’s not predetermined we’re going to just writethem down don’t don’t don’t re random jobs and then we’re going to see where writing would beinvolved [Music] okay we’re back um would you like to go first orwould you like me to go first you can go first okay fashion designer you still need toarticulate the purpose of your design I suppose so you need to anything that youdesign generally should have some sort of marketing like like an explanation ofwhy you’ve done it and the the Spiel behind the art yeah depends I mean arewe talking like high fashion or yeah just just fashion designer yeah so you’re designing you’re designing afancy not a fancy dress a fancy dress for I don’t know a wedding or somethingI don’t know okay I don’t mean I don’t mean like you’re designing a t-shirt for Primark I mean like well that’s about telling the story isn’t it likeultimately with with the wedding dress because it’s it’s a key moment in someone’s life so you want that dress tobe part of the story so it’s about your ability to weave a story into how youpresent the dress okay now I don’t know how much obviously they’ve got departments that deal with this but Ithink as a designist you still want to be able to communicate to the copy editor and and people like that who willactually present the dress why why you designed it in the way that you did and what it represents and what exactly yeahcool all right what have you got so I’ve got three I’ve got three jobs where you don’t reallyneed um writing that much so plumber electrician dentist oh you did all threewas that all three well I’ve done plumber electrician dentist and then I’ve got two which require I think quitea lot of writing okay I didn’t I I I chose non-writing I didn’t I didn’t say like lawyer or yeah book editor orsomething so my my three that were linked together were fashion designer graphic designer or video editor likethose sorts of creative creative jobs I think we spoke about this in the last episode with Andrew the video editorthing like you need to be able to communicate what you want cut and like how you want it to be done and why it’sthis is done the way that it is and yeah so that one we kind of discussed last month um so they’re they’re sort oflinked now one of mine is similar to yours you wrote down plumber or yeah Iwrite down Builder Okay Okay so let’s discuss that plumber Builderelectrician well first of all I think a plumber Builder they need to understand I think they need fairly goodcomprehension of codes and that kind of thing so planning but they don’t necessarily need to know like obviouslya lot I think there’s quite a high rate of Dyslexia amongst Builders plumbers those kind of trade professions M um butit doesn’t mean that they’re illiterate they they they obviously they obviously need to understand what’swhat’s going on and it is useful to have a basic level of um English I think obviously to get ontocourses in the first place you do need to achieve minimum levels so whetherit’s a functional skills in English or whether it’s like a c at GTC so that’sone reason why you should probably try and apply yourself a little bit atschool um same with electrician same with dentists like although dentist you’vegot to reach a very high I think you need to like obviously you need to go through Med medical school you need a really good academic record but actuallyonce you become a dentist there’s not that much writing no it’s mainly teeth it’s just like yeah this is wrong withit yeah there be yeah there’ll be a couple of notes after each patient but then you’ll hand that to a receptionist or whatever and they’ll but surprisinglylittle I think considering how much you would have you would have done at school you would have you would have had to dolike medical ethics and that kind of stuff so there is a lot of writing but only to get there and then once you’rethere it’s very little yeah but I think that is probably to sort of develop yourmind and cognitive ability and that sort of stuff cuz you like brought that up in the medic episode you need to be able tocommunicate and communicate with loads of different people in different ways yeah you need the skill of communicationwhich is connected to writing writing obviously is a vessel by which you can improve that communication and then I Iput psychologist and teacher because those are jobs that require no so yeah so the the idea ofthe exercise was to go with I mean it’s fairly obvious why a teacher and a psychologist needs to be able to writebut I don’t know like some people might undervalue well underestimate um how much skill isrequired as in those professions like psychologists is explaining a narrativein a sense like given a narrative of why a patient is there in the first place and why they’re experiencing certainsymptoms that kind of thing for their notes but then te there is a skill in like feedback we’ Iwe’ve talked about this we talk about this all the time like tutor meetings and that kind ofthing like how do you deliver feedback well there’s um you need to you need totemper your feedback carefully you got to be careful about what you say um and yeah you need to say thetruth like and it’s hard to sometimes say the truth without coming across asas incentive or rude yeah yeah there’s a surprising and especially if you do like written feedback cuz I’ve looked throughlike school reports my old school reports and that kind of thing and then certain teachers are very good atexplaining exactly what I need to improve and and then um their advice youcan actually take something from and then some teachers are less good at thatthey just say criticize or something like that without it being that constructive so I think obviously thosethose teachers you’d learn less from their feedback so that’s somethingthat’s um a key skill of writing is alsounderstanding what your audience needs to hear yeah not just wants to hear but needs to hear needs tohear yeah okay um I have I’ve got one more if you have you gone through oryour already yeah um yeah so the last one I had was a driving instructorlittle curve for for you well they still need evidence don’tthey it makes sense when you deliver feedback to someone anything where you deliver feedback you’ve got to deliverin a certain way so it come I think it’s similar to the teacher in that respect if you’re doing a a test examiner aswell you need written recourse if it were to be taken to mhm it’s a bit likeum police officers and they do a lot of writing you don’t see it but they spendmost of their time writing which is probably not the best thing that’s where they all are yeah but they’re literallywriting stuff yeah and they’re trying to they’re trying to protect themselves to someextent same in like um Mid Ry nursingthere’s so much writing involved that we don’t see as a as a patient or whateveryeah um um and that’s primarily to protect them the hospitalall of that kind of thing so how you write things how accurately you present stuffmatters so before I started my blog I I’ve been journaling like

Fringe Benefits of Writing

handwritten handwritten journaling um so my main my reason for writing was moreto get clarity on my thoughts mhm which I guess is also a way of having toexplain yourself and what you’re thinking and feeling um so it’s it’s it’s more forlike happiness Clarity and that sort of thing what would you say are the likeFringe Benefits I did a little bit of research on this so there’s there’squite a lot of benefits to writing that are a little bit surprising okay um theresearch on it I think might be problematicbecause it depends first of all how many how many problems you have in the first place solike if if You’ got a lot of traumas and stuff like that actually writing is probably more effective if you gottrouble articulating your feelings then there tends to be more benefits so it has different effects ondifferent people but overall seems to be positive so there was a study in 2005where bulky and Wilhelm They carried out a a study on Universitystudents um and they’ write maybe three to five times a week a sort of shortthing about a traumatic event in their life so um inent in instances of traumain their life and um the effects wereoverall very beneficial they had approved affect so improvedaffect is that they were able to express their emotions moreaccurately okay it’s kind of a weird psychological term effect effect umreduce stress which is has a lot of physiological benefits I think I thinkthat that’s where a lot of the physiological benefits come from is a redu this this is why why I started becausejust a lot of uh a lot of thoughts going on all the all the time and having themon paper and they had fewer po fewer posttraumatic intrusion symptoms so whatthat means is basically like flashbacks of the event so they had few of them it’s difficult though because when youwrite this sort of stuff down you have to kind of relive it you do but then you have but then you have to relive it overand over again you’re able to let go of bit more um there’s a there’s a whole thing where like people like write downthe traumatic stuff that they want to let go of and then physically scrunch in a piece of paper and throw it behindthem yeah it does something into you yeah like it I used to do thismeditative um I used to do meditation when I was at school and I used to justum imagine all the events and then mentally put them all in a RIS cyclingbin or just in a bin in my mind like a visual the visualization thing yeah andthat would actually help me quite a lot with um any issues that I was havingyeah cuz your mind doesn’t know the difference between something you’ve imagined and something that’s actually happening it’s the same thing in the mind so yeah you play tricks on yourselfbut yeah they sort of protect you um there’s this whole idea of a psychological immune system that therewas a book that I read called stranger strangers to ourselves umpsychological philosophy essentially um and it was it was about creating a narrativeself um and basically in the act of writingwe’re actually able to form a more cohesive sense of identity I definitely feel that’s truecuz whenever I write things down thoughts that was sort of scrambled and disordered in my mind come togetheryeah I I found that and also there there’s writing forenjoyment um and I think I think that’s like also like that’s less connected to theIDE of like journaling and stuff like that but like I get some Joy from just producing something that’s fine yeah alot of people don’t it depends what your interests are yeah yeah and but I thinkif you were to try and I think a lot of the a lot of the time people have people don’t enjoy writing because they thinkthey’re bad at it it’s not so much that writing itself is painful it’s that their perception oftheir ability as a writer is the main problem I think that’s true cuz i’ I’venever been a big writer or I never was a big reader either up until likeadulthood yeah and um yeah I I found that that I found that to be true and Ifound myself actually starting to enjoy writing they’ve also done a studyusing sort of Base off off the trauma sort of path so I’m I’m like okay allright so you don’t have trauma just imagine that you’re not very traumatized and that kind of thing you don’t havelike so many issues what other benefits could acre um they did a study involvingcritical thinking and like problem solving and cognition mhm um Quito andCS it was like a 2007 study and they were just they took some bi biologystudents and these biology students were either they were sort of split into twogroups one of them one group wrote about their findings afterwards the othergroup were just given quizzes after their lab work and they found that thecritical thinking of the lab students who actually wrote down the findings in detail and sort of did some of thatthinking on their own were just better when it came to analyticalskills and that kind of thing so and that kind of links back thatlinks to sort of the Jordan Peterson claim which is that writing isthinking so some level writing is thinking I I don’t think that’s an exactequivalent because I imagine you know the Epic poet Homer whowrote The Iliad and the Odyssey yeah so he’s typically shown to beum depicted as blind so he couldn’t he couldn’t necessarily write he was an AALpoet but he was able to think so I feel like that equivalence isn’t quite there like I can imagine I can conceive ofsomeone who can’t write but they can actually think quite well but I’d saythat’s the exception that proves the rule in most cases people who write a lot are very capablethought like it tends to ma marry marry together well I guess it’s because it’sreflexive so reflexive activity whereas like speech if you you just have aconversation it’s not often reflect reflective well not always tends to bemore reactionary yeah yeah that’s true but then writing allows you to sloweverything down perceive things more clearly well I think it gives you more time to think like if when you when whenpeople have a conversation most of the time they’re just waiting for their turnto talk they’re thinking about what they’re going to say next rather than listening and thinking about what theperson they’re talking to is actually saying whereas if you’re writing you’d write a bit you actually stop you’dthink and then you continue to write yeah where I think most people should do that in conversation I don’t think mostpeople do and that’s why I think turning more of yourconversation into a writing like task is quite a nicething to do so yeah reflecting on what people say I mean something they alwayssay is like you know when you get given an interview question it’s a good idea to take a bit of time just to thinkabout it or like yeah clarify what it means if you if there are any take apause yeah yeah and also in another sort of way it calms you down it calms youdown but it change it gives the a shift in power yeah exactly the least powerfulperson is the powerful is the person that’s talking well they always say that so thepen is migher than the sword don’t they um it’s also because like rightpreserves people’s thoughts it’s hugely powerful yeah likewe have periods of History Dark Ages throughout history where literature’slost that kind of thing no one remembers if you’re a great thinker or something like that who cares it’s like wewouldn’t know about Socrates if we didn’t if we didn’t find his book if we didn’t have if we didn’t have Plato nobecause Plato wrote down so everything that we know about Socrates and his existence comes fromPlato like his students who could write I’m thinking of um I’m thinking of Epicteers I think CU he did all the he all of the all of his written stuff was justhis own private thoughts and journal whatever they W they were never meant to be seen by anybody else oh yeah yeah buthe wrote them down and now everyone there’s loads of there’s have you heard of theMyans I know I’ve heard the the name I’ve it’s really really funny what whathappened like they had these they had temporary records and permanent records all right now permanent records are keptin on paper Papyrus and that kind of thing right backpack they kept on papusI’m saying was going to come next they weren’t written in stone were they they okay so the the temporary records wereactually like written on Clay so they could be rubbed out so there were likeini but then there was a fire yeah yeah yeah I can see that like the Linear Bwas preserved as a as a language and that kind of thing so like a lot of what we learned was from the temporaryrecords ironically not the permanent ones so I this is a interestingdigression yeah a little detour earlier we spoke about how

Writing To Make Money

writing um is used in different sort of jobs and different roles yeah um as asort of tool as a tool yeah which obviously you you would make money fromthose jobs but there are other jobs that are maybe some quite obvious some not soobvious where you can write and make money from writing being an author writing a Blogyeah or writing copy yeah for like um marketing copy for a company or websitecopy for for a company or for your own whatever yeah um um how how how else can we actuallyuse writing to further your like career or um well aside from just being if youif you’re a clear Communicator you usually are more likely to get into a leadership role I thinkthat’s like if you if you’re able to communicate your ideas clearly present things clearly you’re more likely to Sgo up the career ladder quicker I think that’s so yeah but I I mean more in terms of I guess I’m thinking more interms of like the creative side cuz it’s kind we’ve spoken about corporateclimbing the ladder blah blah blah CVS and interviews and whatever else I’m thinking slightly left filled of of thatwell I think you’re you’re talking about so but you kind of mentioned blogging and that kind of thing yeah so okaylet’s let me um ref well no the blogging stuff is still like you can make money from from blogging but okay let’s put itthis way let’s say with what we do in the businessyeah where do we use writing where you probably didn’t see yourself needing toor where most people wouldn’t see themselves needing to well it’s like the internet has internet exposure ispredicated on you could either do videoor uh sort of photos gifts that kind of thing and writingarticles so that those are like the different ways that you can like reach audiences so different mediums and I’dsay it’s surprising how much writing we do just topresent our ideas to the the public about tuition and education becausewriting is showing your expertise but it’s alsoum this sort of technical thing of search engine optimization so SEO umdrawing people to your site through keywords and it’s a bit different fromhow you’d approach writing if you just just wanted to write something you’ve got to approach it in a very differentway you’ve got to think about first of all what people are searching for thekind of audience that you want to attract um the search engine side so whatkeywords people are looking for then you’ve got to write good content that peopleread you’ve got to you’ve also got to be quite strong visually so you want toalso you want to break up the text in ways that people read it effectivelylike and be able to navigate yeah but there’s other technical schools involved like creating a Content that links todifferent heada things in the text so that I guess that’s less writing that’s more like combined with technical yeahyour technical skills but I’m just saying that you you marry all of those together when you do something like blogwriting or something like that see I’m thinking more of like where I’ve had to use writing where I just was notexpecting to need to where where would you so I would say things like designing the leaflets andmagazine adverts that we do the writing the copy for thatum captions for Instagram yeah oh yeahlike you need a decent caption depending on what the post is yeah um I’m thinking like it’slike video in video editing where we’ve got like um let’s say let’s say the um essay video that we did a few weeks agoyeah um you know having having some stuff come up on screen that involves writing um and then I’mthinking um posters for the front for the a boards um email campaigns that goout yeah every couple of months to all the clients and supposed to go every couple of months um that had a hell of alot of copy in it and but you also need to write something interesting yeah so I’m saying I’mshowing I’m like where where this where the writing is sort of yeah appeared when I wasn’t expecting it to yeahthere’s a I think there’s quite a lot in promote if you want to promote a business or something like that there’salways a lot of a lot more writing than you’d initially think then even people that even people that don’t run abusiness people that want to go into like the kids that want to go into YouTube and they want to go into I don’t know Instagram or whatever it is likeyou know YouTube descriptions and stuff stuff with it like tit optimizing titleswriting uh within the video having some free downloads that go along with thevideo like captions for for Instagram like these sorts of places like so whenkids say why do I need to know Shakespeare and this and that I’m never going to need to doit I want to sort of show that it will it will appear in everything that you dowell I think it it’s it’s it’s all it is a bit different so it depends whatdifferent purpose but still Rising it depends what depends what your what you’re pushing in the first placeas to how much you’ll need Shakespeare I just think that you should know it because it’s oh yeah I’m not speakingspecifically about about that I’m I’m saying just writing in general knowing how to write well does appear in prettymuch everything the trouble is is like this idea of writing well I I wouldn’t necessarily say it’slike good writing it’s just effective for its purpose so yeah depends on onthe um the platform on the audience yeah it’s like PG Woodhouse would probably not be very good at marketing copy buthe’s a hell of a writer really really brilliant writer probably one of the most skilled comic writers but youwouldn’t you wouldn’t say he’s good at that so different people are good at different things yeah I mean we didspeak earlier about the different uh yeah writing for different audiences but yeah it is always surprising how muchwriting you need especially I think it’s especially if you run a business like umI’ve I’ve seen so many businesses that their sight presence is quitepoor because they’re not writing anywhere near enough and I think that’s the main thingis like most people don’t write they don’t write nearly enough to actually push their business in the first placethey have no presence online because they’re not writing anything wellthey’re relying on Word of Mouth probably yeah but they could leverage leverage some other leverage adifferent audience almost like they they could bring in a lot more customers and that’s always a good thing like if youcan you you obviously you got your like faithfuls your local people and thatkind of thing but you want to go you want to aim for more than that because that gives you a lot more flexibilitywhen it comes to pricing when it comes to other things exposure umyeah I mean it’s fine if you’re a bakery or something like that maybe you don’t need to do quite as much writing as thetuition company tuition company probably should do quite a lot of writing yeah but then the bakery stuff that’s wherelike email campaigns and Instagram yeah captions and things coming Ino theymight want to write recipe books yeah to expand like yeah like you got to think a bit creatively and out of the box Ithink that’s so writing is always important umbut but yeah it arguably in some Fields is moreimportant right so to finish off we are going to give five what we think are

How to Improve Your Writing (5 quick tips)

five quick tips to um to improve your writing yeah so the first thing isplanning planning what you write yeah um which none of the kids ever want to dothey don’t want to do it but what you what you do find is if they spend like five minutes thinking about something umputting something together having a structure structurers then they tend towrite better things um or have an approach to writing something that’s very important yeah it’s the whole likethinking before you like we spoke about earlier it does help practice practice so practice which includes um sort offeedback peer peer feedback Community feedback so you were talking about likejoining a writing group yeah writing group yeah so at University I did I Ijoined in the creative writing Society writers Block in at Birmingham it’s avery very good name writers block um and it was just it was just good because youyou meet there you hear other people’s stuff you get some you you have to do some writing you have to produce andthat’s quite a useful thing like you you have to produce in that like 20 30minutes that you have to write um and then you you read out what you’ve produced so you you get used to hearingsome critical feedback it depends how you take the feedback but I think it’s also um not just about feedback but it’sabout accountability yeah and pushing each other forward that’s why I was looking for like blogging groupsbecause um I it’s completely up to me to turn up at the cafe and then startwriting so I’ve sort of made a routine of like I need to do thisbut is useful to have a group that can also hold you accountable and be likeokay and and you have some fun as well yeah it’s not just that like even umseeing you do writing has inspired me to write more yeah exactly um proof readingand grammarly Gramm that’s that’s that’s um fairly self-explanatory um grammarlyI do use quite a lot um it’s not like like the thing is is that as someone whosometimes it can fit it can pick up on some some mistakes and they should bepicked up on but I sometimes just don’t like stylistically what it suggests butyou can you can give it a different prompt and you can change how you can change the style of it based on it sometimes picks out things that justdoesn’t sound very good but um for those like little mistakes here and there solike 10 10 consistency or um little typos and is very good I do find the AIis quite good on grammarly you can click on shorten this or make it more formalor change the tone to Friendly whatever it is it’s quite good at that sort ofstuff um kind of an obvious one reading more yeah and reading a range of thingsyeah I’m not very good at reading reading a range of things I’m kind of tend to read the same type of yeah booksas you can probably see yeah it just means that you’ve got more tools if you’re able to read a range of stuffthen you’re able to change up how you write and approach things yeah and itprobably help you find your style it’ll improve your vocabulary yeah improve how you think about what you’re writing andand also a lot of kids especially because we we deal with students all thetime they’ll they’ll fall into the habit of reading one book or a certain type ofbook time yeah yeah um and it is important to have a bit of variety otherwise they’re not going to change ordevelop use of techniques so a lot of people don’t necessarily they learnabout metaphor similes personification that kind of thing but how much do they use them probably notenough lot of the time yeah I think people I think people overuse similes but don’t they don’t understandmetaphors that’s why they don’t use metaphors and solidification as much as they should I think some a lot of similes can be movedover to to those two to make it more interesting yeah it’s definitely it’s a lot stronger to use a metaphor than itis similar especially when you’re explaining something um but also just usinganalogies and that kind of thing some people would use that to explain stuff explain things yeah um and then exchangeso extends the range of expressions and words that you know which will come from the previous you know come from readingand it comes from reading but I actually think it’s reading is not as effective forexpanding vocabulary as just learning words and then using them in different contextsso like you you even using flash cards learning some new words I know a lot ofadults don’t want to do that um but you get your kids to do it so yeah I I I learn a lotfrom like when I find out a new word it makes me really happy new word I can usethis do you have a new word that you found recently at all new word not so recently but it mademe it made me happy when like one of our students recently used what word was it conspicuous yeah he use the wordconspicuous which I thought was weird because like you kind of know the word weirdly you kind of know the wordinconspicuous before you know what the word conspicuous is but he was like whaton but he he so this is how old washe how old is he 10-year-old and he it was really nice because we’ve been working onvocabulary um and he wouldn’t have used this word if I if we hadn’t done so muchwork on vocabulary and he he said okay what what’s an antonym forconspicuous well he used the word antonym yeah oh well yeah and and I waslike this is the that was brilliant so I was like okay well there is this word inconspicuous that you can use whichactually means yeah I think what we’ll do is we’ll we’ll leave a link to the wiiz cards in the description they yeahso they’re a set of vocabulary cards are quite synonyms and antonyms and yeah lots of um interesting words onthere um those were the five tips uh and obviously to improve writingthe best thing you can do is just to do it more yeah it’s surprising that like there’s some people who brilliantreaders like among students and stuff like that they’re brilliant readers brilliant at comprehensionbut they really struggle with writing so it shows that those skills are actuallythey’re not as connected as they are connected but they’re not as connected as people think well I think they’reconnected if you actually do it yeah cuz if you if you if you don’t write then they’re not going to be connected but ifyou do that stuff will like translate across and that so of writing writingmore gives you more confidence to be a good writer and then you become a good writer it’s like anything smallcompound yeah yeah exactly thanks for joining us if you are watching us on YouTube don’t forget to like And

Outro

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