Learn English Writing
Review
Last week, we did this:
- syllabus
- 6+1 writing traits – our class learning goal
- looked at some examples of interesting first sentence from books
- first sentence writing activity with picture prompts
- how to use experience to improve voice and the quality of writing
- before and after writing exercise
This Week’s Activity Plan
Here in an outline of the English writing activities and printable worksheets. The focus this will build on what we did last week. The students will be writing creative stories with a unique voice and good sentences, especially the first sentence.
1 Sentence Fluency
Practice writing good sentences by learning how to use noun modifiers. Students can improve the clarity and style of writing by learning how to write with noun modifiers. There are two worksheets; we will do the Level 2 printable worksheet.
2 Story Writing
Learning how to write a good creative story helps ESL students improve writing skills. These stories help students practice idea development, organisation, word choice and sentence fluency. Creative story writing by taking a prompt from last week (first sentence from picture prompts). The pictures are here. This first draft will be handed into me.
3 Fluency Activity
One objective of this class is helps students to write faster. That is called fluency. There are a number of activities which students can do to write faster. We will start one fluency activity this week. In order to complete this activity, it is important have recording sheet.
This week we will do an exercise called Timed Repeated Writing.
4 Extra Resources
Want to improve your listening skills in your free time? Here is a free resources for you: englishlistening.rocks.
The learning method is called extensive listening. You listen a lot to easy to understand text. That helps listening become automatic. That means you understand without thinking.
I suggest this plan: read one short story once or twice. Make sure you understand all of the words. Listen to the story two or three times per week. After a while, the listening will seem simple. That’s good. That means you are getting better.
The lessons are levels sorted based on high frequency words. Level 1 is easy. Level 5 is a little longer and a little harder.
The lessons work great on a smartphone. So help yourself and take 10 minutes a day on the bus or subway to improve your listening skills.
One-Hour Class
In the third hour of class this week students will complete two tasks.
1 write a mini saga
2 complete the exercise to add punctuation (see below)
3 A wonderful example of how to start a letter. It is by Albert Camus. He wrote a letter to his elementary school teacher after he won a Noble Prize for literature. Read the first sentence of the letter.
Editing
Here is a challenge. Read the story. Add punctuation and capital letters to make the sentences understandable.
The story is below. Or open the pdf file, a printable worksheet which has the text plus answers.
_____
here’s a question who made the radio neon lights and the laser
one man Nikola Tesla he’s not a famous inventor like Edison but his work changed the world
Tesla was born in Serbia in 1856 and died in 1943 in New York City in 1884 he moved to America and worked for Thomas Edison he left after a year because Edison did not pay him Tesla quit and started his own company
Tesla was very intelligent he spoke 8 languages he could read a book and remember everything in it he was also good at thinking up new ideas
sometimes he imagined things that were not possible for example he said wireless phones would be used in the future today, we call that a mobile phone
sometimes he imagined things and built them his most important idea was AC electricity that’s the power we use in our homes and offices
when Tesla first made AC there was a problem with Edison he wanted to sell DC electricity AC was better because it moves long distances without losing much power AC was also cheaper if a city wanted DC they needed many power stations because it loses power when it moves long distances
Tesla had some strange habits he was always washing his hands he did not like to shake hands with people and he loved number 3 he would walk around a building 3 times before going in
this great scientist made more than 200 things many of these machines are still used today sadly he was not good at business and died a poor man
that’s different from Edison he made things that people wanted and he made money
Tesla’s life shows us that it’s good to be intelligent it’s also important to be good at business