Learn English Writing, Week 3

 

Here’s the plan for this week.

1. Check your understanding of the answers from the textbook (on Friday). Remember: it is your job to make sure you understand the questions, answers, and vocabulary.
2. Re-write the rafting story (better voice).
3. Re-write the dog and sausage story (word choice, voice and articles).
4. Re-write the howl story (wolf boy story based on the video).
5. Another review of Six Writing Traits.
6. Complete exercise 1 to improve your writing by fixing choppy and run-on sentences (sentence fluency).
7. Complete exercise 2 to help you practice better subject verb agreement (conventions).

Update

Here are the answers fort chapter 2 of the textbook.

 

Writing Activity 1: Write Less to Say More

Your task is to edit sentences so the main idea is not changed but useless words are removed. Example:

• Wordy:  John was employed and now works for the company Samsung.
• Better:  John now works for Samsung.

1. Helen is a smart and intelligent woman.
2. Our student is a physically ill student today.
3. I will complete my research paper in a period of a week.
4. John’s stylish boots, made of crocodile skin, cost him an arm and a leg.
5. Susan is the teacher who teaches Chemistry at her High School.
6. The student is writing a writing assignment for his English Composition class.
7. The book which is located on the table is a Grammar book.
8. Julius ran with the other runners in the 10,000 meter track event and finished third overall.
9. Her purse, which was manufactured in Italy, was stolen yesterday.
10. Steve was given a warning by the police officer.

Here is Part b.

Paragraphs can be improved by avoiding choppy sentences and, the opposite, run on sentences. Here is a writing worksheet to practice good sentence variety. But, not too choppy and not too runny.

 

Writing Activity 2: Guided Writing

1. Rewrite the story by changing spider to spiders. Be sure to change all of the subject verb agreements.
2. Write one more paragraph to finish the story.

A spider, and his neighbor, a hyena, decided to go to the river together. There they met the King of the river who gave them a gift. It was a bucket of fish. The spider and the hyena made a fire. As the spider cooked the fish, he threw them on the river bank to cool. However, the greedy hyena ate all of the fish by himself. When the spider walked to the river bank to eat some fish, tears of anger filled his eyes. The hyena asked the spider why he was crying. The spider replied that some smoke from the fire was in his eyes. Quietly, though the spider was planning his revenge.

 

Learn English Writing, Week 2

 

This weeks’ plan.

1. Last week you wrote a short story about a boy and his mother after watching the video Howl. This week please rewrite the second draft and give it to me to read.
2. Learn about the Six Traits of good writing.
3. Two or three writing exercises.
4. Review answers from chapter 1 of the textbook.
5. Here are some answers for Unit 1 in the textbook.
6. Let’s do some more editing: try the second and third paragraphs.
7. Here is a warm up exercise that helps students students write a good paragraph. It’s called looping.

UPDATE (Friday the 13th)

This week, most students completed two or three short writing activities, as described below. I have read all of the student writing and offer these general comments on patterns of errors that I hope we can correct over the next few weeks (or sooner).

There are two categories of errors: conventions (e.g. basic grammar, spelling, punctuation, etc) and style (i.e. how well the meaning is expressed through vocabulary, sentence fluency and organisation).

In general, here are three ways to improve your writing:

1. think before writing
2. think while writing
3. slow down – it’s not a race

The first or second draft always has a few problems. Nobody ever writes a perfect story the first time. Please review these comments and use them to help you when rewriting your stories.The idea is to get better with each draft.

Conventions

1. BE verb plus second verb that doesn’t match (e.g. I’m was watching the window)
2. poor prepositional phrases
3. wrong order of verb and adverb
4. confuse he and his (subject and pronoun)
5. wrong use of articles The and A
6. incorrect  use of ED and ING endings on adjectives
7. confuse so and such
8. confusing verb tense (use present tense and past tense)

Style

1. forget to use paragraphs
2. not enough details or explanations to support ideas
3. many ideas left unspoken (e.g. It was the best day of the summer. – why best?)
4. sentences in wrong order
5. sentences too wordy
6. repeat same word in one sentence
7. not enough synonyms

Six Traits of Good Writing

This week we will learn about Six Writing Traits. It’s a framework to help teachers evaluate student writing. It also helps students understand what makes good writing. This is important to know because good writing is more than good grammar.

1. IDEA: a clear message and story. Good writing shows, it does not tell.
2. ORGANISATION: There is a beginning and an end.
3. VOICE: The writing shows a little bit about you. There is a person writing, not a robot. There is feeling, humor, personality.
4. WORD CHOICE: Use words that describe people, places, things and actions very well. Great words paint a picture.
5. SENTENCE FLUENCY: Sentences have rhythm just like music. Writing with long and short sentences is one way to create rhythm.
6. CONVENTIONS: The mechanics of writing, which includes  spelling, punctuation, capitalization, grammar and paragraphing.

ESL Writing Exercise 1: Six Sentences

The Idea

This controlled writing activity helps students write clear sentences by focusing their attention on every word.

Step 1

Write a six-sentence paragraph with three rules.

1. Do not repeat any word, including contractions and articles.
2. The paragraph must tell a story.
3. The final product should be a structured paragraph (i.e. there is a topic sentence and cohesion).

Step 2 – The Example

I went to school today. My backpack was full of stuff. It had binders and pencils inside. They were used for class work. Brittany is in first period with me. She has a bag filled with things as well.

Step 3

Students write. When completed, these short passages can be used as the base text for a small group dictogloss exercise.

The Skill

Improve clarity of meaning by reinforcing proper use of antecedents and expand student vocabulary through synonyms.

ESL Writing Exercise 2: Adding Your Voice

Click here to get that writing lesson activity about adding voice to a text

 

ESL Writing Exercise 3: Word Choice, Voice and Articles

The Idea

This writing activity helps ESL students learn to add their voice to a story along with word choice and one grammar point; watch carefully how students use definite articles – the, a, an.

Step 1

Look at the pictures on this worksheet. The story is called Dog and Sausage.

Step 2

In the story, I want you to be one of the characters, either the boy or the dog. Write the story from that perspective.

Step 3

The key point here is to use use a variety of verbs to describe actions, places and senses.  Add details.

The Skill

Improve the ESL students’ ability to describe places with details and add their own voice to the story.