It’s week 13 of the semester. Time for quiz #2.
ESL Writing Plan for the Week
Tuesday
quiz #2
Friday
return short story analysis with comments
return writing with feedback
Hour 1
It’s time for a quiz. Please remember: no paper, phones or notebooks will be allowed during the quiz.
Hours 2 and 3
Comments on Short Story Analysis (15)
Comment 1
All of the short story analysis were great or good.
Great means interesting and complete. It also means the students made a good effort to answer the hard part of the assignment: notice how organisation, words and sentences affected the story. This was a noticing exercise.
Good means students wrote a nice summary but did not have any text analysis.
Comment 2
Some of the summaries that were not great had strange endings, like these:
The story teaches us that having a good heart is important.
I learned it is important to tell the truth.
Sometimes kindness can make a mistake.
These are very soft conclusions. Sometimes, they are called Motherhood Statements. They are not really part of the analysis.
Comment 3
There were so many examples of amazing sentences.
Like most of his novels, it is filled with soft humour, elegant irony and worldly wisdom. (Witches’ Loves)
These sentences tell me that the student notices words and how they affect the story.
These sentences describe Bob by using a lot of adjectives that express colors, shapes and size such as pale, square, little, keen and white. As a result, the reader, can easily imagine how Bob looks lie. (After Twenty Years)
This students notices how the writer used organisation to make an interesting story.
Moreover, he doesn’t give the read important information to make a twist. For example, readers can’t get any clue about a man’s job and his purpose to get stale bread in the first part of the story. (Witches’ Loves)
This student notices a great example of SHOW ME, DON’T TELL ME.
And he used bad words such as crap, kill her, finish her, damn, strangle her and so forth. There readers can know he is a little temperamental and he really hates his wife. (Death by Scrabble)
Comment 4
Generally, I was surprised and pleased by the quality of the writing.
Surprised because so much of it was well organized and had many elements of writing style.
Pleased because I saw many people put a lot effort and thinking into their writing project. Writing well is hard and I noticed your effort.
I also hope you notice this truth:
- the quality of your writing depends almost 100% of your time, dedication and effort.
Final Writing Assignment (15)
This is the final new writing assignment for this class this semester.
This witting assignment is a little different for 2 reasons.
- I won’t be checking your writing or providing any feedback. I will be happy to answer any questions that you may have.
- This question will be on the final exam. I am giving you one of the exam questions before the test.
What does that mean?
That means you have a lot of time to prepare a thoughtful answer. That also means your answer has to be really good in order to get a good score (e.g. few grammar or spelling errors, nice organisation, excellent logic, good use of numbers in your analysis, a clear and logical answer).
The final writing assignment requires some critical thinking, analysis and an understanding of basic math.
Get the writing assignment details here.