Help with your Homework

_{Help with your Homework} ©

_{By Michael Casey}

_{If you have been following my words then you will know there are several teachers in my family, I even did a bit of English as a Foreign language teaching myself, and I do have a Shanghai wife too. Any billionairesses out there who want English lessons and who can come to Birmingham for a month do get in touch.}  

_{Back in 1998 I did in fact teach somebody for a month as my house guest. Now what I really want to do is talk about essay writing.  My big daughter has done her mocks and the next few months she has to revise and then write essays galore. So tonight I’m going to give you a bit of advice, its up to you if you take it.}

_{First of all Cut and Paste will get you a FAIL. If you have to write an essay on sausages all you have to do is Google Essays on Sausages. Your get a ton of results I imagine, what you then do is read 10 of them. You will then be a sausage  expert, or I can introduce you to Big Sid the butcher who is in The Butcher The Baker and The Undertaker. This is simple basis research.}

 _{In the old days you would have to lift encyclopaedia which were as big as paving stones and weighed just as much. At Primary school, the encyclopaedia were on a shelf just to my left and I did have to look through them  to research projects. Nowadays there is the Internet, and you can always buy lots of sausages from your local butcher and he’ll  tell you loads of stuff. Then you’ll write the perfect essay on sausages.}

_{If you know how to interrogate Google then you can get the best and varied results so you have plenty of reading material. Remember too Fake News is not just confided to Facebook and other social media, you can get dodgy information  about sausages  on the Internet, that’s why you need to cast your net wide.  Remember an intro and then facts, detail and proof followed by a conclusion, and end with a good quote.  Now its a very long time since I wrote a serious piece. I like to write humour, comedy even, but the format does have similarities with serious essays.}

_{In an essay you have to write in an interesting way about the given topic. In the study period of 1 to 4 years you should have built up a knowledge of your subject, in my case I know all their is to know about why Stella Artois makes me fart if I  drink 17 pints and forget the cheese and onion crisps. In your case you know all there is to know about Shakespeare’s Sonnets, so you will start with a few lines from a Shakespearean Sonnet, I used to love her lots until she gave me the pox from washing all her socks, which is Shakespeare’s last but one Sonnet, then he died suddenly, nobody knows exactly why, perhaps a research student will find out.}

_{After the opening quote you will answer the question about Shakespeare with depth and  knowledge, as much knowledge as you have for Manchester United and the record goal tally of Wayne Rooney. With as much passion as you have for Man U and the girl behind the bacon slicer in the deli you will pour out your knowledge onto the page. You will give every ounce of your being on the page, you will sound like Will Shakespeare’s agent, as I was when I wrote an essay back in 1975.} 

_{Nothing will be missed, the end result will be a masterful essay, and as a reward the girl behind the deli will give you a free slice, of your favourite something.}

_{If you have revised well you will have the knowledge to answer anything the examiner throws at you in all of the subjects you are studying. You are prepared, the subject knowledge is in your head, and if you have mastered essay writing everything  will look perfect on the page.}

 _{It is just like flower arranging, you may be a 240kilo Russian weight lifter, but when you write your essay on Choral Singing, or Farm Management or Nuclear Fusion, with hard core Chess as a sub subject, whatever it is your words on the page are as beautiful as the flowers in the vase you keep by the picture of your dead mother.} 

_{Anything is possible if you have revised and you know all the tricks of essay writing, you can even Google “the tricks of essay writing” for you are  ready and your mother in Heaven will throw salt in the eyes of the examiner just in case your answer on Choral Singing was not quite good enough for a A. For I’m sure Russia mothers are just the same as Irish mothers,  they never give up.}

_{I think I’ve more or less covered everything, study, practice, read wide, never cut and paste, and make sure to tell your mother you love her, whether she is Russian or Irish, mum’s like to hear it, especially if they are dead, then they can boast to the Angels just how clever their 240kilo sons are, now that they have opened a flower shop, to take their mind off Nuclear Fusion, which they  teach at University.} 

_{For Variety is the Spice of Life.}