English Writing Class: Week 1

Welcome back to the university. It’s a new semester and time to start learning English again.

NEW MATERIAL

Section 1

Five things to learn about good writing:

1. Remove needless words.
2. Describe complex ideas with simple words.
3. A paragraph  talks about one idea.
4. Topic sentences are mini-thesis sentences.
5. The best writing talks about big ideas with specific details.

Section 2

Here is an ESL video lesson that uses animation to build vocabulary and fluency skills. It’s a four-part ESL activity.

Howl from Natalie Bettelheim on Vimeo.

1. Key Vocabulary

• shadow
• crawl
• chew
• growl
• lamppost
• moonlight
• secret passage

2. BRAINSTORM

Brainstorm the word HOWL. What does it mean, What ideas come to your head when you think of howling.

3. WATCH THE VIDEO

Watch the video. Make notes about 2 different kinds of things. One is the activities that are part of daily life. Second, the unusual things you see in the video.

Howl from Natalie Bettelheim on Vimeo.

4. WRITE A SUMMARY

Now, make a summary of the story with your partner.

Write about the plot, the location, the characters, the action, the surprises and the ending.

Does this story have a message? What’s the point?

Section 3

Remember Dr. Seuss.

WRITING CLASS SYLLABUS

Here is the English writing class syllabus.

LEARN WORDS

Here is a quick learning exercise that will my students very important.

Look at the words and pictures on this vocabulary worksheet. Your job: learn these 20 words in 90 seconds. Good luck.

NOTES ON KOREAN STUDENT WRITING

Two studies provide useful information about the English writing habits of Korean students and the types of errors that students make. Here is a summary of some of that research.

A study of Korean medical students who wrote letters in English found that:

• 42% writing errors related to the wrong word, mostly because of translation
• 15% errors caused by wrong preposition
• 14% errors caused by wrong article
• 6% wrong plural form
• 6% bad subject verb agreement

The study also found no connection between a high TOEIC score and better writing.

A different study of Korean students (1990) found:

• 31% errors were word form (verb tense, singular/plural, count/non count)
• 21% bad articles
• 10% word choice

These are useful ideas. But there is one problem with this research. It focused on mistakes that are easy to count, like spelling. The research did not look at two other very important parts of writing: a clear idea and good organization.

EDITING EXERCISES

Editing sentences and paragraphs a great way to improve your writing. When you fix other people’s mistakes, you learn how to see the errors. This will help you see the errors when you write your own sentences and paragraphs. This writing worksheet has a few paragraphs. Read a paragraph and find the mistakes. Write the new paragraph in your notebook.

WRITING EXAMPLES

This worksheet has one short paragraph. It describes a person’s experience on the subway. The writing gives the reader a good picture of the what we can hear, see and smell in a subway. Read the story. Look closely at the verbs the writer uses to help us understand the place. It is a good example of an old writing rule: don’t tell me about the subway, show me the subway with words. BTW, what are the five  human senses?

Now it’s your turn to write. You will write a one paragraph story.

1. Choose a place which has many different senses.
2. Brainstorm a list of verbs, nouns and adjectives.
3. Start writing one paragraph.
4. Read, edit and rewrite.

Good luck.

WRITING TOOLS

This ESL writing worksheet helps students learn English sentences by practicing a few basic writing tools. By tools, I mean basic sentence patterns to write clear and useful sentences.

APOSTROPHES

Here is an ESL writing worksheet which helps students learn how to use apostrophes in sentences.