If you want to spark imagination and build real writing confidence, this ESL creative writing activity gives students an engaging way to experiment with voice, tone, and perspective. By stepping into the mind of an AI assistant—or a classroom robot—students practice narrative skills while strengthening grammar patterns such as the present perfect and present perfect continuous. This lesson fits perfectly into any ESL writing lesson, especially when you want an approachable task that still challenges higher-level thinking.
21 writing tools
Complex Sentence Drills with Sentence Combining
There is no such thing as good writing. There is only good rewriting. This review lesson builds on that approach with some good old fashioned drills that help English students learn and relearn complex sentences.
#4 Teaching Writing: Words and Categories
Teaching Writing – Thinking in Categories
This ESL activity helps students learn English writing by imaging and creating abstract categories as a tool for organizing information. Known as the Picture Word Inductive Model, this technique is used to help young learners with language development. I have adapted the process to make it suitable as an inquiry based writing exercise for ESL university students.
#5 Teaching Writing – Hedges
Teaching Writing – Hedges
Main Idea
This ESL lesson teaches English hedging techniques. Hedging is an important writing skill because it shows ESL students how to express sophisticated ideas and avoid broad claims that, sometimes, can appear clunky. Learning English hedging techniques and vocabulary improves the student’s ability to express reasonable arguments, sound more persuasive and communicate with greater precision.