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.

This is a short week. Just one hour of class time because of the long holiday. So let’s get busy and learn how to write English well.

Today’s lesson plan and activities

1. Review answers from text book. Your holiday homework was to read chapter 1 and answer the questions. You will be self checking your work. Download this file with suggested answers.

2. Last week, you wrote a short story after watching the video Howl.  I will give you with feedback today.

Read more

Welcome back to the university. It’s a new semester and time to start learning English again.

NEW MATERIAL

Section 1

Five things to learn about good writing:

1. Remove needless words.
2. Describe complex ideas with simple words.
3. A paragraph  talks about one idea.
4. Topic sentences are mini-thesis sentences.
5. The best writing talks about big ideas with specific details.

Section 2

Here is an ESL video lesson that uses animation to build vocabulary and fluency skills. It’s a four-part ESL activity.

Howl from Natalie Bettelheim on Vimeo.

1. Key Vocabulary

• shadow
• crawl
• chew
• growl
• lamppost
• moonlight
• secret passage

2. BRAINSTORM

Brainstorm the word HOWL. What does it mean, What ideas come to your head when you think of howling.

3. WATCH THE VIDEO

Watch the video. Make notes about 2 different kinds of things. One is the activities that are part of daily life. Second, the unusual things you see in the video.

Howl from Natalie Bettelheim on Vimeo.

4. WRITE A SUMMARY

Now, make a summary of the story with your partner.

Write about the plot, the location, the characters, the action, the surprises and the ending.

Does this story have a message? What’s the point?

Section 3

Remember Dr. Seuss.

WRITING CLASS SYLLABUS

Here is the English writing class syllabus.

LEARN WORDS

Here is a quick learning exercise that will my students very important.

Look at the words and pictures on this vocabulary worksheet. Your job: learn these 20 words in 90 seconds. Good luck.

NOTES ON KOREAN STUDENT WRITING

Two studies provide useful information about the English writing habits of Korean students and the types of errors that students make. Here is a summary of some of that research.

A study of Korean medical students who wrote letters in English found that:

• 42% writing errors related to the wrong word, mostly because of translation
• 15% errors caused by wrong preposition
• 14% errors caused by wrong article
• 6% wrong plural form
• 6% bad subject verb agreement

The study also found no connection between a high TOEIC score and better writing.

A different study of Korean students (1990) found:

• 31% errors were word form (verb tense, singular/plural, count/non count)
• 21% bad articles
• 10% word choice

These are useful ideas. But there is one problem with this research. It focused on mistakes that are easy to count, like spelling. The research did not look at two other very important parts of writing: a clear idea and good organization.

EDITING EXERCISES

Editing sentences and paragraphs a great way to improve your writing. When you fix other people’s mistakes, you learn how to see the errors. This will help you see the errors when you write your own sentences and paragraphs. This writing worksheet has a few paragraphs. Read a paragraph and find the mistakes. Write the new paragraph in your notebook.

WRITING EXAMPLES

This worksheet has one short paragraph. It describes a person’s experience on the subway. The writing gives the reader a good picture of the what we can hear, see and smell in a subway. Read the story. Look closely at the verbs the writer uses to help us understand the place. It is a good example of an old writing rule: don’t tell me about the subway, show me the subway with words. BTW, what are the five  human senses?

Now it’s your turn to write. You will write a one paragraph story.

1. Choose a place which has many different senses.
2. Brainstorm a list of verbs, nouns and adjectives.
3. Start writing one paragraph.
4. Read, edit and rewrite.

Good luck.

WRITING TOOLS

This ESL writing worksheet helps students learn English sentences by practicing a few basic writing tools. By tools, I mean basic sentence patterns to write clear and useful sentences.

APOSTROPHES

Here is an ESL writing worksheet which helps students learn how to use apostrophes in sentences.