“Nice to see you, to see you nice” – Bruce Forsyth. “Fair is foul and foul is fair” – the three witches in Shakespeare’s Macbeth. “Mankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to mankind” – John F Kennedy addressing the UN general assembly in 1961. “We want to collaborate with the teachers themselves because they are the experts in their classrooms.” Rhetorical devices “We are not at all saying we know everything,” said Holmes-Henderson. They said any resources that emerged as a result of discussions would be produced with teachers. The academics started meeting in April and are planning an international conference in Durham on the subject in September. The long-term aim is that our training and resources can be rolled out to other schools across the country.” skip past newsletter promotion “Together, we hope that we can create something that will have a significant impact across the north-east. I would not normally be having conversations with colleagues in psychology, English and education because academia is really siloed. “We have people who would not usually ever meet. The strength of the project was the mix of academics taking part, Holmes-Henderson said. They are joined by the psychologist Thomas Vaughan-Johnston, who is an expert in vocal characteristics of persuasive speech, and David Waugh, an education professor who co-wrote the book Integrating Children’s Literature in the Classroom.

Holmes-Henderson represents classics, while the English representative on the project is Prof Simon James, who led the Durham Commission on Creativity and Education.

“Long after they’ve forgotten the rules of trigonometry or the imperfect tense in French, they retain the skills required to disagree constructively,” Holmes-Henderson said. Improving children’s oracy skills has lifelong benefits, the researchers said. Holmes-Henderson said one report found that pupils fell twice as far behind during the pandemic as their peers in the south-east.

The original motivation for the project, titled “shy bairns get nowt”, is the disadvantage faced by schoolchildren in the north-east. I think we see a real difference between the private sector and the state sector in terms of preparing young people to find their voice confidently.” “Kids in the north-east have the least access to classics compared to children elsewhere in the country. The north-east of England is an area of particular “classics poverty”, said Holmes-Henderson. Other rhetorical devices include asyndetons (the deliberate omission of conjunctions), anaphoras (repeating a sequence of words at the beginning of neighbouring clauses) and alliteration (the repetition of initial consonant sounds of nearby words in a phrase). “They can also use it to construct their own communication in order to be as articulate and self-expressive as possible.”

“If you don’t know about chiasmus, it is quite easy to be taken in, which is why it’s important for young people to have a rhetorical toolbox where they can deconstruct the communication of others,” Holmes-Henderson said. Holmes-Henderson said chiasmus was often used in political speeches but not always for the right reasons, and knowing about it helps audiences read between the lines. Holmes-Henderson is a former secondary school teacher and has seen first-hand the lightbulb moments when pupils realise that the latest Sony advert, for example, is a chiasmus.įamous examples of chiasmus include John F Kennedy’s “Mankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to mankind” and Forsyth’s “Nice to see you, to see you nice”. “We want to empower young people to find and use their voice,” she said, adding that teaching rhetoric was just one part of the project but an important one. Holmes-Henderson is collaborating with three academic colleagues who have expertise in other areas – psychology, English and education – and who are all passionate about equipping children with skills to become effective communicators. If successful, the aim is to roll the scheme out across the UK. Arlene Holmes-Henderson, a classics professor at Durham University, is leading a project to help improve the oracy of children in the north-east of England.

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