Writing Class 2014: Week 4

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Unit 2

Suggested answers for Unit 2 of the textbook are here.

This is week 4 of the ESL writing class that teaches English composition skills.

Review of Writing Activities

  1. Learned what makes good writing by looking at the Six Writing Traits.
  2. Practiced descriptive writing skills by summarizing the story about a boy (Howl) and describing your own ideas.
  3. Practiced using the articles A and THE correctly with the dog and sausage story (pictures). In this story you also practiced writing with a voice (choose the boy or dog).
  4. Practiced writing with voice and adding details by rewriting the rafting story.
  5. Practiced self correction skills by editing a few short paragraphs for spelling and punctuation (i.e. bee and bat stories).
  6. Learned some vocabulary and practiced simple sentence writing with the textbook (units 1 and 2).
  7. Practiced writing clearer sentences by removing unnecessary words (e.g. Helen is a smart and intelligent woman.)
  8. Practiced careful writing by rewriting the spider and hyena story and changing the spider to the plural form.
  9. Write sentences with parallel structure to create nice style.

This week

  1. improve writing style by fixing choppy sentences and run on sentences.
  2. finish writing the story about the man and the party. Your job was to add details to make the story more complete.
  3. write with emotion
  4. if there is time lets do more editing (part 2).

Writing Activity 1: Writing with Details

This activity was described last week. Go here to read the assignment again.

Writing Activity 2: Add Emotion

The task is to write a one or two paragraph story which is filled with emotion. But, and this is the hard part, you cannot say what the emotion is. I found this writing project on a website by a writing teacher. I have changed some parts to make it a little easier for ESL students.

Here is the project.

A mother (or father) is sitting in a coffee shop. She was talking on the phone. Someone told her that her husband had just died in a car crash. Pretend you are that person. Describe what you see, what you hear, what you feel. How are the smells, the sounds? What does the coffee taste like?

Your job is describe how the person sees the world now that she has heard some very bad news. Basically, how emotion changes the way a person sees the world.

Writing Activity 3: Short Writing Assignment

Here is a short and effective ESL writing exercise. It helps English students develop an acute awareness of the vocabulary choices they make while writing. I found exercise on a website called The English Teacher.

  1. Objective: ESL students write a six sentence paragraph. They cannot repeat a word, including contractions and articles.
  2. Rules: The paragraph must make sense and demonstrate standard principles of a well structured paragraph (i.e. topic and unity). It should not be a simple collection of unrelated sentences.

Benefits: Students become aware of vocabulary choices and their word weaknesses. It might also be a little fun.

Writing Activity 4: Choppy and Run On Sentences

Click here to get the exercises for choppy and run on sentences.