ESL Writing STUFF

Helping English instructors teach better, plan faster and work smarter.

Writing Class 2014: Week 4

by

Unit 2

Suggested answers for Unit 2 of the textbook are here.

This is week 4 of the ESL writing class that teaches English composition skills.

Review of Writing Activities

  1. Learned what makes good writing by looking at the Six Writing Traits.
  2. Practiced descriptive writing skills by summarizing the story about a boy (Howl) and describing your own ideas.
  3. Practiced using the articles A and THE correctly with the dog and sausage story (pictures). In this story you also practiced writing with a voice (choose the boy or dog).
  4. Practiced writing with voice and adding details by rewriting the rafting story.
  5. Practiced self correction skills by editing a few short paragraphs for spelling and punctuation (i.e. bee and bat stories).
  6. Learned some vocabulary and practiced simple sentence writing with the textbook (units 1 and 2).
  7. Practiced writing clearer sentences by removing unnecessary words (e.g. Helen is a smart and intelligent woman.)
  8. Practiced careful writing by rewriting the spider and hyena story and changing the spider to the plural form.
  9. Write sentences with parallel structure to create nice style.

Read more

Writing Class 2014: Week 3

by

This week’s lesson plan and activities

  1. Check your understanding of the answers from the textbook. Remember: it is your job to make sure you understand the questions, answers, and vocabulary.
  2. Finish writing the rafting story (from last week).
  3. Write the dog and sausage story (from week 2 post).
  4. Write the short story that shows emotion (from week 2 post).
  5. Rewrite the howl story (wolf boy story based on the video).
  6. Quick review of Six Writing Traits.

This week

It’s another week to learn and improve English paragraph writing skills.

Writing skills to learn and practice this week:

  1. tighter sentences
  2. fewer words
  3. choppy sentences
  4. more descriptions
  5. more sentence variety.

Writing Activity 1: Write Less to Say More

This is a reflective writing activity. It’s importance is to help student become conscious of the act of writing. In this case, to develop an awareness of wordy

Read more

O Me ! Oh Life

by

Learn poetry and writing with listenign and reflection exercises from eslwriting.org.

O H ME O LIFE

Here is an ESL writing exercise that begins with a poem and asks English students to write a considered response.

Exercise Structure

1  Read the poem O Me! Oh Life! by Walt Whitman.
2  Students write a response piece by briefly discussing their interpretation of the poem.
3  Students answer this question, based on the last part of the poem, “What verse will you contribute?”

The Poem

O Me! O Life!

Walt Whitman (1819–1892)

 

O ME! O life!… of the questions of these recurring;

Of the endless trains of the faithless—of cities filled with the foolish;

Read more