This is a tweet I received.
I replied like this:
1. It's a nonsense. It's no help for children to write interesting stories or non-fiction. It is overly, misleadingly and mistakenly focussed on sentences and not on themes, or characters' dilemmas/motives. And fails to talk of 'story' grammar eg reveal-conceal, story arcs, obstacles.
2. If you want to help children improve their stories, you have to deal with motive, which then leads to how do we know motives, often through flashback and 'interiority'. Again: nothing here on narration. Ominiscient or first person? Omniscient with p.o.v. of one character or more?
3.Another point: most modern fiction is about enabling the reader or taking the reader 'there', to the mindset or place or time of the story. How do you do that? Through the eyes of the protagonist or through narration or both? Help children to do that!
4.In sum, the advice coming from government about story, is ignorant and irrelevant. That's because they won't (and never do) talk to writers about writing. It's absurd.
5. When it comes to sentences, the advice we got in the 1950s is more helpful. Sentences are made up of phrases (groups of words with no verbs) and clauses (groups of words with verbs). That simple advice, helps you construct sentences.
6. As for 'fronted adverbials' and 'expanded noun phrases',. they are neither good or bad. They can be either. Telling children they are good is a nonsense. What matters is choosing when to use them and not use them. Same with similes (which are nothing to do with grammar).
7. I'm glad there's advice about the senses but this misses out other motors for writing: namely memory, imagination and knowledge of images, scenes and motifs from other 'texts' (stories, songs, films etc) that you can adopt, adapt and recycle in your 'text'.
