Writing Top Down

We are going to write something from top down. That means, we will handle difficult ideas from the very first. You may think that this is going to be difficult. Do not worry, I am there to guide you! We are going to look at some wonderful film criticism. The piece we will look at relates – of course – to a film other than the one we are going to consider. All newspaper articles are written with a given word length in mind. This one is 700 words long. But I predict that if we study the first 375 words closely, and leave the remaining 322 for later, we will get a very good idea of what we need to echo in our own writing. Because in our own writing we need – first, a subject. That will be the film I will introduce you to. But secondly, we will need to know how. What kinds of words to use from what kinds of linguistic areas? And that, of course, is generally considered to be tremendously difficult for non-native speakers. But in fact it will be fine – provided you do two things which in fact I think you find quite hard….! Neither of them involves exceptional intelligence: only the breaking of old, bad habits. First: follow the teacher’s instructions, exactly. The teacher has considered this carefully. Trust the teacher. Second: concentrate strongly, clearly and with love on what is being offered. Everything stems from keeping your mind and heart open and alert. It will not be easy. But if you create obstacles for yourself by trying to do other – unrelated – non-relevant – things during our sessions you will not only not learn – but will go some way to wrecking the delicate experiment which I want to try. This experiment is not my personal indulgence. It is an attempt to circumvent the established received wisdom that you must start bottom up and build from the basement to the clouds. On the contrary. We start in Heaven – a familiar concept in China and to the Chinese – and slowly, like a spiralling dragon, we will descend to earth. If we find we can do this, we are beginning to transform both ourselves and the educational system within which we operate. Academic English is dead. It is like the lava of a volcano which erupted at the time of the arrival of the Romans in Britain, or somewhat later. It has coalesced; and if you dig it up you will find that it is completely inert. No new language will flow into your mind from this debris. New English – based on film – is, on the other hand, live; and alive. All our texts are freshly written, not dating from 1948, as I noticed on a still-live university text the other day! It is like the flowering of apple trees in the spring. In the Autumn, we will eat their fruits!