eslwriter

Rob Whyte is a university teacher, teacher trainer and writer.

Simple & Effective ESL Writing Activity: Teach List Poems

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teach list poems

If you want an ESL creative writing activity that builds confidence, encourages original ideas, and works in almost any classroom setting, then you should teach list poems. This simple poetry format gives students room to experiment while still offering structure. It’s a perfect balance for an ESL writing lesson. Even better, it naturally supports creative ESL prompts, ESL writing practice, and flexible levels of scaffolding for high-beginner to advanced learners.

This article walks you through why list poems work so well, how to teach the activity step by step, and optional extensions for learners who need more challenge or repetition.

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Writing Class Week 11

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This week the ESL students will combine the English writing skills they have learned so far this semester and begin to compose practical business documents. The first business document is an office memo.

Business Memo Writing

A memo is a business document that communicates information to people inside the company or to customers. Memos are typically written in an easy to read style. They are not academic research papers nor are they letters.

Here is a sample memo with typical format. Most memos have these features:

  1. a top section with the receiver’s name, the writer’s name, the date and subject
  2. the content, often divided by bold headers
  3. a close with a name and signature
  4. a reference to any attached documents

Memo Writing Assignment

This lessons helps ESL students develop business writing skills. These skills will be useful to any student who works in an environment that communicates with international clients and customers in English.

Specifically, the students will:

  1. learn data analysis and interpretation skills by identifying patterns and changes
  2. practice summary writing by describing important patterns and changes in text
  3. develop critical thinking skills by explaining changes in patterns
  4. create a business memo by using a standard memo format

The data for this assignment comes from Korean food consumption figures.

Instructions for the Students

In this exercise, the student is a research assistant working for Pizza Hut. In this scenario, we pretend there are no Pizza Hut restaurants in Korea, however, the company is thinking about expanding into Korea.

Before any financial decisions can be made, the company needs background information. One part of that research is an understanding of food consumption patterns in Korea, past, present and future.

There are four tables of data. For each table, the students will write two paragraphs. One paragraph will describe key patterns and changes from the past to today. To simplify the task, we will examine only two years of data: the oldest year and the most recent year.

The second paragraph offers some reasons that might  explain the cause  of these changes.

One paragraph will be written to summarize changes for all data. A final paragraph or two will offer the some ideas about future trends in food consumption.

Write the report in a standard business memo format.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Build Skills with the 100 Word Stories

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story

If you want an ESL creative writing activity that strengthens student skills and fits neatly into a short class period, the 100 Word Stories challenge is a classroom gem. This compact writing task works beautifully as an ESL writing lesson, a warm-up for essay units, or a quick confidence booster for hesitant writers. It also gives teachers an easy way to introduce creative ESL prompts, narrative structure, and focused ESL writing practice without overwhelming learners.

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