ESL composition lessons

Teacher Training Writing Class: Week 3

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These English exercises help ESL students learn how to improve writing sentences and paragraphs.

THESIS SENTENCES

A thesis sentence is your main idea. It is the first sentence of a paragraph. It is important to learn how to write this sentence. When you learn how to write this sentence, your writing, speaking and thinking skills will also be better.

Here is an example.

Many Americans buy Japanese cars. (not a thesis sentence)

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Teacher Training Writing Class: Week 2

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That was a long Chuseok holiday. I hope you are ready to being the training program again. This week will learn about Six Writing Traits.

SIX WRITING TRAITS

It’s a framework to help teachers evaluate student writing.

  1. IDEA: a clear message, the content. Good writing shows, it does not tell. Stimulating, interesting, surprising content.
  2. ORGANISATION: The structure. Is it compare and contrast, point by point analysis, chronological? There is a beginning and an end.
  3. VOICE: We sense there is a person writing to us, not a robot. There is feeling, humor, personality.
  4. WORD CHOICE: Does the writer use a rich, descriptive vocabulary? Great words ignite images and a sensory experience in the reader’s mind. Not just a powerful vocabulary but a skill in choosing the right word for each situation.
  5. SENTENCE FLUENCY: Sentences have rhythm just like music. We sense the easy flow with our ears and mind. Playing 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.

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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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Week 2 – Six Writing Traits Lesson

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This week will learn about and practice Six Writing Traits.

SIX WRITING TRAITS

It’s a framework to help teachers evaluate student writing. The framework has six variables:

IDEA: a clear message, the content. Good writing shows, it does not tell. Bits of information that are often overlooked. Stimulating, interesting, surprising content.

ORGANISATION: The structure of the writing. Is it compare and contrast, point by point analysis, chronological? The story unfolds with ease. There is a beginning and an end.

VOICE: We sense there is a person writing to us, not a template. There is feeling, humor, personality.

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