English

Rob Whyte ESL speaking and writing class lessons, activities and worksheets for English students who want to learn and improve their English communication skills.

ESL Conversation Review Activities

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This is week 14 of the semester. The final exam is just around the corner so it’s time for my ESL students to learn English and get ready for the test.

ESL Conversation Exam

Here are the final exam questions. Each student will get one question from each part.

This will be a conversation exam, so expect follow up questions. The key point is to show your communication skills. The score will reflect your ability to express ideas that people can understand because your pronunciation is clear, your vocabulary is accurate and your logic is persuasive.

Part 1 Summarize and Conversation

Talk for 45 seconds and tell me the important parts about:

  1. a book
  2. a movie
  3. a tv show
  4. a news story
  5. your future

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ESL Writing Lesson: How to Write and Format an Email

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This is the last week of new content to help ESL students learn English writing.

Email Writing Research

  1. This slideshow provides basic data about email messages.
  2. Here is an email which I sent to many hotels in Korea. Some of the answers I received are here.

Dear Sir/Madame,

I’d like to get some information about rooms and availability at your hotel.

I have two adults and one teenager traveling to Seoul. They need a room for two nights
on May 26 and May 27.

1. Do you have rooms available on those nights?
2. What are the rates and taxes?
3. Do you have wheelchair access?
4. What is the best way to travel to your hotel from the airport?

Many thanks for your help and information.

Rob

 

PROFESSIONAL EMAIL WRITING

Writing an effective email in English is not difficult. But my students need to learn a few basic writing skills.  This lesson will help them in the future, especially when they start looking for a job and need to write emails in

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Ideas to Improve Writing Style

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ESL student writing – especially narrative and descriptive pieces – can be flat, dull and homogeneous.

Overuse of simple verbs is one problem that can fix that style problem. Tired verbs like be, find, go, say and see are easy to write in proper. Sure the sentence is grammatically correct but writing is a lot more than just good grammar, ain’t it? Sure, it gots to have style.

Here are a couple of exercises which I uncovered in a terrific book, 500 Word Theme by Harry Kroitor and Lee Martin (1994).

Editing for Style: Tired Verbs

Read the paragraph. Pay attention to the tired verbs (e.g. be, can, go, etc). rewrite the paragraph.

bug-2The Volkswagen is unexcelled for dependability.

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ESL Intermediate Conversation – Week 13

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It’s the the last week of original content for the semester and last chance for the ESL students to learn new English words, phrases, ideas and things in this class.

ESL Conversation Activity #1

Before I go I’d like to…

  1. visit …
  2. thank …
  3. meet …
  4. eat …
  5. tell …
  6. give …
  7. see …
  8. witness …
  9. know …
  10. make sure …
  11. other …

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