William's Words

As part of our Transition Year programme at St.Wolstan's we participate in the Student Enterprise Award competitions. Each TY class divides into groups of 6-10, depending on interest and we set up mini company groups.
We develop and produce a product which we feel would be useful to people, and we get a true opportunity to become entrepreneurs. Its a team effort, and everyone must share the work fairly in order for Mini Company to be a success.
Well, my group is "William's Words". We have produced a booklet which translates the hard, 16th Century Shakespearean language into modern day English to aid students with their study. As we have all been in the position of studying Shakespeare for Junior Cert, we feel that it would've helped us a lot with our study.
We have our own independent blog for "Williams Word's". http://williamswords16c.blogspot.ie/












Product profile

Our product is called ‘William’s Words’. It is a glossary of words and terminology found in some of William Shakespeare’s most famous plays, such as Romeo and Juliet, The Merchant of Venice, Hamlet, Macbeth and Othello, which are to be found on the Irish secondary school curricula at both Junior and Senior level; namely Junior and Leaving Certificates. We created it to be used primarily as a study aid for students, but also as an additional source of information and help for Shakespeare enthusiasts of all ages.
All of the information in the book was researched with the help of teachers and educational documents. All of the content was written by us, is in our own words and is original work by the group.
It is to be an A6 size booklet of approximately 36 pages. It will be bound, and printed in colour by Bridgeprint, Tallaght. The text will be in old style font, printed on an aged parchment background. The cover bears a picture of William Shakespeare, the company logo and the names of the team members. We intend to supply a feathered quill with it.
Design: We created the logo seen on the cover, back page and posters. We looked up pictures of old paper on design websites to make the background for each page. The tagline is ‘Have no fear, it’s only Shakespeare’, indicating that the booklet will help reduce the difficulty of Shakespearean language for students.
 The booklet will contain a dictionary-style glossary of words and phrases from Shakespeare’s plays. It translates this 16th century language into modern English that is more easily understood by young people in particular. It also will contain games and puzzles, such as wordsearches and crosswords.
Production of this booklet will cost €1.50, however it will be retailed at about €6
Consumer Description: This is our blurb, and is to be found on the back of the ‘William’s Words’ booklet. It is how we market this product to our audience.
William’s Words: Your clever, clear guide to Shakespeare!
As students who have spent many an English class studying the dreaded Shakespeare plays, we know first-hand that the works of Shakespeare, though an extremely important part of the English Student’s study, can be challenging to modern students at the best of times! The use of the English language has changed a huge amount since Shakespeare’s time, the 16th century, and as a result, many of the words, phrases and terms of speech are no longer used regularly and are strange and unfamiliar to us. Our helpful booklet ‘William’s Words’ is basically a Shakespearean Dictionary! It includes detailed and accurate translations of words and phrases commonly used in some of Shakespeare’s most famous plays, ‘Romeo and Juliet’,’ Hamlet’, ‘The Merchant of Venice’ and ‘Macbeth’ and makes the reading and understanding of these easy and hassle free! No fear, it’s only Shakespeare’





Market Research

Our Mini-Company ‘William’s Words’ did field research before commencing the compiling and production of the booklet. The aim of this was:
•To gauge the amount of business we would get: whether or not the target market would have an interest in our product, and whether its production would be worth our while.
•To see what kind of material we would include in the booklet: We wanted to tailor this product as much to the needs of our customer as possible. This concerned the plays from which the vocabulary, quotes and additional information would be taken (Romeo &Juliet, Hamlet, Macbeth etc.) the individual features our buyer would find useful (such as glossary of words, context of plays, quote meanings etc.) and additional activities that the buyer would enjoy, such as games, a ‘Who’s Who’ section or fun facts.
•To determine a reasonable price we could retail the product at: what our consumer would be willing to pay. And how this would fit in with our production costs (cost of printer etc.)
We carried out this market research by distributing surveys we drew up to a representative portion of students from each year group (1st-6th years) within the school.
The following results show how we fared: In general we got very positive feedback about the idea from students saying it would be useful/ helpful to them, got many ideas for content, and could see an average price our consumer would pay.
Included is a copy of the survey that was given to 60 students.


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