ESL writing activities library

Intermediate Writing, Spring, Week 5

by

ESL Writing Class

This is fifth week for students in the English writing class. A quiz next week.

Work Plan – Week 5

Writing

  1. rewrite #1 – finish food story (first week of semester)
  2. rewrite #2 – finish Room 8
  3. rewrite #3 – finish the creative story (from a picture prompt and first sentence exercise)
  4. rewrite #4 – rewrite short story by adding lots of information
  5. rewrite #5 – improve paragraph structure (story with 4 elements)
  6. write #6 – articles, word choice and cohesion (new activity this week)

Other stuff

  1. extra resources
  2. homework
  3. story text analysis
  4. feedback

ESL Writing Activities

Hour 1

Attendance and review (5)

Extra Resources (5)

Listening to a stories

  • Serial, a popular audio serialized story

ESL Class Homework for Next Week (5)

  • Read a short story by O. Henry called After 20 Years
  • Analyze the text according to the 6+1 writing traits.
  • Discuss comments about the story next week.

Can’t remember all of the traits?

 

Text analysis (10)

  • Comments on the story which I assigned as homework last week
  • What can we learn from this text?
  • Can you see any elements of the 6+1 writing traits in this story?

 

Feedback and writing (20)

 

Hour 2 -3

Opportunities for Improvement (20)

  • #1 – first sentence
  • #2 – better paragraphs
  • #3 – more details
  • #4 – articles and word choices

Problem

  1. Students are not sure about the proper use of articles
  2. Students need to be more proactive with word variety

Task

Look at the picture. It is a logic puzzle. Solve the puzzle by putting the pictures in the correct order.

That’s the easy part.

Next, write a short story that describes all of the actions. Do not leave out any steps. Be sure to use definite and indefinite articles correctly.

That’s a little easy.

Finally, use a different verb for each action. Do not repeat verbs.

That’s the hard part. You will probably want to use a thesaurus for this step. Please use words familiar to you and avoid impossibly difficult synonyms.

 

Quiz Review

Here are some review questions that will help you prepare for the quiz.

Click here to download the pdf file with quiz review questions.

Basic quiz outline

The quiz will have three parts.

Part 1

Checks your ability to edit text for basic errors and paragraphs. Read the text, find the mistakes and rewrite the passage with no errors. Also, you will be expected to create paragraphs in logical spots in the text.

Part 2

Requires a little writing, but careful thinking. In this question, you will think of a book or movie that you like. Choose one. Then write three different first sentences for the review.

You don’t have to write the whole review. I want to check your ability to write a first sentence that creates interest using three different techniques.

Here are the three techniques:

  1. Drama – contrast or surprise
  2. Humour
  3. Emotional impact

Part 3

Another editing question. You will read a few sentences which have too many words. Remove the unnecessary words and make a few small changes, but keep the same meaning.