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.

Teach ESL Writing: Paraphrase Writing Lesson Plan

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PARAPHRASE BY CHANGING NOUNS TO VERBS

PART 1  NOMINALIZATION

Nominalization means changing a word into a noun. Nominalization usually involves changing verbs to nouns though adjectives (e.g. careless to carelessness) and adverbs (e.g. wordy to wordiness) can nominalized as well.

Nominalization is commonly used in academic textbooks, legal documents and professional or government reports. Its effect is to emphasize the action by adding punch to the end of the sentence (e.g. chemical fertilizers accelerate plant growth). It also creates a noun concept which can be operationalized and classified (e.g. fatal becomes fatalities).

Some critics don’t like nominalization because it creates wordy sentences. In other words, some writing critics harbor no fear regarding their expression of dislike of wordiness.

Here are some examples of nominalization:

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Fall 2013 Advanced Conversation Class: Week 7

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This week, the students will finish reviewing for the mid term exam. Those questions are on this question worksheet.

Here is a collection of arguments to review logical fallacies.

EVEN MORE FALLACIES

Read these arguments. Then rewrite the argument using the simplified sentence and identify the fallacy.

1 If I make an exception for you then I have to make an exception for everyone.

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ESL Students and Writing Style

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I am more and more dissatisfied with the focus and intent of so many ESL writing books.

They look the same and tend to focus on the same limited, mundane skills: thesis sentence and paragraph structure. I know those things are important but I also know that they diminish student interest in writing as a craft. As a mode of personal expression. Good ESL writing and teaching shouldn’t be an exercise in rote memorization.

On that theme, I am interested

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A Quick Writing Sponge Activity

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One of the challenges associated with the art of teaching writing is time management. I think managing pace is an acutely important skill that can kill or motivate a class of student writers. C’mon, not many people can put their head down for 50 minutes and crank out a nice readable piece of writing. So, why should expect ESL students to do that?

That’s why sponge activities are vital. They ask students to write a chunk of writing, with a definite start and finish, in shorter

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