Writing Class

Rob Whyte ESL writing activities, lessons and composition worksheets that increase vocabulary and teach English students how to write sentences and paragraphs.

ESL Writing Week 12

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In this lesson, the ESL students will learn how to combine two English sentences into one long sentence. Before starting, there are two grammar phrases you need to know for this lesson:

  • coordinating conjunctions
  • subordinate conjunctions

There are many ways to combine two sentences. In this lesson you will learn and practice two ways.

Sentence Combining 1: Coordinating Conjunctions

Coordinating conjunctions are small words that join two sentences, clauses, word or phrases.

When joining sentences, we don’t need to change the sentences very much.

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Student Writing Samples

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Here are some examples of ESL student writing as they learn to write English poems, particularly Japanese haiku.

 

Rain is falling down, still

Trees are suppressing and waiting

Under he trees, you are

 

Cherry blossoms bloom

A girl standing with a smile

Waiting for someone

 

the son of sun

hot today, hot tomorrow

maybe we died

 

the sound of silence

nobody can hear, but can feel

it’s in the darkness

 

children don’t know me

and they shouldn’t know know me wholly

I am the failure

 

 

Writing Class Week 11

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ESL Writing Lesson 1: Appositives

Appositives? Huh? Sounds hard, but it isn’t.

An appositive is a noun that describes another noun.

Appositives can be a single word or many words (a phrase). An appositive looks like a relative clause but there are no words like ‘which, who or that’ at the beginning of the clause.

Here are three examples; the appositives are in red.

The appositive can go at the front of the sentence. Like this:

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Writing Class Week 10

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It’s a short week of English classes, thanks to the long holiday weekend. Here are a few extensive writing activities to help ESL students improve their English composition skills.

ESL writing activity 1

Write one haiku.

Japanese poetry. Typically (but not always) 17 syllables written in three lines. Divided into 5-7-5.

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