We all know reading matters.

It helps children build vocabulary, follow stories, absorb sentence patterns and become stronger at comprehension.

But what about TV?

Historically, TV gets treated or perceived as the enemy of learning.

Too much screen time. Too much noise. Too much staring into the middle distance with anxiety attack-inducing music and sound-effects.

And yes, if a child is just sitting there for hours with no thought, no conversation and no engagement, it’s probably not doing much for their English, or communication skills.

But TV itself isn’t always the problem, it’s what happens around it.

Used properly, TV can be a brilliant prompt for creative writing, inference and storytelling.

“Have you checked it?”

“Yes...”

Every parent has had this conversation.

Your child finishes their homework, you ask whether they’ve checked it, they say they have, and then you glance at it and immediately spot three missing full stops, ten spelling mistakes and a sentence that appears to have wandered off halfway through and never come back.

So what’s going on? Are they being lazy?

No, not necessarily.

The truth is that most children are not naturally good at checking their own work. And there are a couple of very understandable reasons why.

If I had to give just one piece of creative writing advice that works at almost any age and ability level, it would be this:

Vary your sentence lengths.

That's it. Not fancy vocabulary. No complicated techniques.

Just change the length of your sentences.

It sounds almost too simple, but it makes an enormous difference.