ESL Writing Activities
Review
Last week:
- started writing assignment #6 (change in food consumption patterns)
- started writing assignment #7 (Can money buy happiness?) – correlation or causation?
This Week
- complete assignments #6 and #7
- review quiz question
- paraphrase writing worksheet
- more about correlation and causation
Quiz #2 Review
You will have a quiz next week. The quiz will be short and have two parts.
Part 1 will ask you to read a one-page story and summarize the main ideas in one paragraph. This is similar to the summaries you wrote about shipping containers, twitter and popcorn.
Part 2 will have a few questions about paraphrasing. You will paraphrase a few sentences.
What can you do to study for the quiz? Complete the practice questions (below) and understand the basic template for a summary.
Learn Paraphrase Writing
One of the final skills to learn this semester is paraphrase writing. This helps students learn three things:
- find the main idea
- improve vocabulary comprehension
- learn and practice sentence patterns
We will learn and practice 4 paraphrase writing skills. Some examples are below. Download this worksheet to get the practice questions.
Synonyms
- Vancouver is an amazing city.
- Vancouver is a wonderful city.
Active sentences
- This homework was assigned by the teacher.
- The teacher assigned this homework.
Appositives
- My mom helps sick people everyday. She is a nurse at the local hospital.
- My mom, a nurse at the local hospital, helps sick people everyday.
- My grandfather walks with Scotty every morning. Scotty is a black terrier.
- My grandfather walks with Scotty, a black terrier, every morning.
Complex sentences
- I was standing at the bus stop. I saw a car accident.
- While standing at the bus stop, I saw a car accident.
More Correlation and Causation
We’ll spend a few minutes with more exercises to help you understand the difference between correlation and causation. This page contains several writing prompts to practice describing correlation and causation.