eslwriter

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

Learn English Speaking, Basic: Week 4

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Here is an outline of the activities we will do this week to help ESL students learn English speaking skills.

This Week

  1. Chapters 2a and 2b in the textbook
  2. Speak precisely about numbers (pair work, big numbers with countable and uncountable nouns)
  3. What’s different? Describe how two pictures are different (street scene)
  4. quick vocabulary recall – say 4 (boxes A and B)
  5. Chapters 2c and 2d
  6. quick vocabulary recall – say 4 (boxes C and D)
  7. vocabulary – words with ph sounds
  8. vocabulary puzzle and word game
  9. hint puzzle – complete a crossword puzzle about verbs

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Sophomore ESL Writing, Week 3

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Learn English Writing

This is week 3 of the semester. What did we do and learn in the English class so far?

  1. wrote a short descriptive story (i.e. a place – or a place and food) as part of the Before and After exercise
  2. first draft of a summary about a video story (Momentos)
  3. leaned how to create a hypothesis sentence pattern
  4. learned the basic elements of a summary (e.g. ask the question – what’s the story about)
  5. learned/reviewed eight parts of speech
  6. read and answered the questions chapter 1 in the textbook
  7. weekly fluency activity (e.g. freewriting)

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Learn English Writing: the Hypothesis

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Learning how to write a sentence with a hypothesis helps ESL students organize text, summarize complex ideas, and write with style.

Summarizing information is a challenge for my EFL students. For example, if I ask students to summarize a short story in a video, they tend to present information in the same sequence as the story. There is no synthesis of information, no presentation of a theme, no defense of an idea.  It’s all very cook bookish.

Teaching students how to write a hypothesis is one solution. The idea is that students synthesize information into a specific sentence pattern and then spend the balance of the text defending the idea or at least explaining it with evidence and details.

Part 1. Basic Hypothesis Format

A hypothesis is a sentence that tells us two (or more) things are related to each other. What is not in the hypothesis is an explanation about HOW the two things are related.

Hypothesis sentences are useful for two reasons.

  • They can summarize complex ideas in one sentence.
  • They tell us what to expect in the future.

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