How Am I Finding English Language?

Throughtout this half term I have found english language to be interesting and I quite enjoyed writing the story for the Halloween flash fiction competition. However, I find it difficult to remember all of the lingustic methods and how they link to each other. I have found the lessons different from what I thought they would be but I still enjoy them. To understand the methods further I will try and think of examples for each of the lingustic methods which could help me remember them.
I especially enjoyed turning the classroom in to a mini maze to try and link each type of text to each other as it was helpful but aslo fun at the same time.
I think and hope I will enjoy the rest of the english language course.

Inspiration For My Story

I got the inspiration for my story from a task we were given; this was to create a Halloween themed flash fiction story for younger years 7-9 for a competition. This story consisted of 500 words and had to be suitable for the audience. The purpose of this story was to entertain the younger audience throughout the Halloween season, to do this I influence them to feel scared and build tension whilst they read the flash fiction and used a variety of lingustic methods such as idioms, metaphors and different sentence types. I used a variety of vocabulary and synoyms that I knew they would understand and would be suitable for their reading ability.

I decided to write my story about paranormal activity happening in the woods at night. I chose to do this because we naturally associate the dark with feeling scared and mystery, this would effect them by enhancing them to find out what the paranormal activity was and why it happened. I named my flash fiction 'Stay Out of the Woods' and this would encourage them to think of why they needed to stay out of the woods and what would happen if they went in there. By talking about the spirits only coming out at night it makes the story more creepy than if it were to happen in the day, this is because the dark is about the unknown and what we can't see.

Stay Out of the Woods

Stay Out of the Woods

Have you ever been told to stay out of the woods after dark? There’s a reason for that. As night falls the mysterious creatures start to emerge. The kind of creatures that make your parents lock the door before they go to bed and draw the curtains slowly across the closed window, as they take a final gaze in to the pool of black that has swept over the horizon, causing the last bit of sunlight to drain away.

Tilly Johnson had always been adventurous for her age, some may say rebellious. If only she’d listened to her parents, telling her over and over again, the story of the dark lady who lived in there. Only coming out at night and if you listened closely, you could hear her screeching cries. They say she died of a broken heart. Widowed at 50, her husband was brutally murdered and the suspect is still loose. But now, she was back for revenge and the cries fell silent across the woods…

“Woah” her friends all gawped at her after she’d finished sharing the tale, in the middle of maths class.
“It’s not real obviously, there’s no such thing as ghosts or spirits” Tilly scoffed, unimpressed by their reactions.
“Well if you’re so brave, why don’t you go in there?” Jimmy Jupiter said smugly.
“Is that a dare?” Tilly raised her eyebrows. Everybody knew she would never back out of a dare, no matter how dark or creepy it was, “you’re on”

And those two simple words are how this nightmare began to unravel…

Tilly had arranged to meet her friends after school before they entered the deepest, darkest part of the woods so she could win her dare.
“Why have you got a rope?” Bethany Simmons asked as they got to the edge of the woods.
“So we can find our way out again” Tilly shrugged, like I said, she knew a lot about exploring (if that’s what you would call this). So she placed some on the floor and gulped before taking the first step in. They walked and walked until the rope unravelled for the last time and lay limply on the floor.
“We can’t stop now” Jimmy protested, so reluctantly, they carried on walking in a straight line from the rope. They heard a shrill scream and froze, hardly daring to breath. They looked at each other, lost for words. The night had started to close in on them and paranormal activity was swamping the woods. Branches tried to claw at them, leaves crunched from unknown footsteps. They fled. Back to the rope to guide them out to the safety they all craved. But wait. They stopped dead in their tracks. The rope was not where they’d left it, but instead coiled around a tree branch. That was when they knew they weren’t alone and there was no way out.

Hearts pounded and knees trembled. A cloaked figure emerged, ragged hair covering half of its face. Tilly turned around, she was alone. She screamed. A strange sensation overcame her body. Her eyes rolled uncontrollably. As if her body was not her own anymore. As if there was a dark demon taking over. As if the cries heard in the woods, had become her own…