ESL writing
Spring 2014 Week 1
It’s the first week of a new semester and the students are (I imagine) happy to be back at school.
For the writing students, here is the syllabus for our class.
LEARN MANY 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
Teach ESL Writing: Paraphrase Writing Lesson Plan
PARAPHRASE BY CHANGING NOUNS TO VERBS
PART 1 NOMINALIZATION
Nominalization means changing a word into a noun. Nominalization usually involves changing verbs to nouns though adjectives (e.g. careless to carelessness) and adverbs (e.g. wordy to wordiness) can nominalized as well.
Nominalization is commonly used in academic textbooks, legal documents and professional or government reports. Its effect is to emphasize the action by adding punch to the end of the sentence (e.g. chemical fertilizers accelerate plant growth). It also creates a noun concept which can be operationalized and classified (e.g. fatal becomes fatalities).
Some critics don’t like nominalization because it creates wordy sentences. In other words, some writing critics harbor no fear regarding their expression of dislike of wordiness.
Here are some examples of nominalization:
Short ESL Writing Assignment
Here is a short and effective ESL writing exercise. It helps students learn to develop an acute awareness of the vocabulary choices they make while writing. I found exercise on a website called The English Teacher.
ESL WRITING EXERCISE
Objective: ESL students write a six sentence paragraph. They cannot repeat a word, including contractions and articles.
Rules: The paragraph must make sense and demonstrate standard principles of a well structured paragraph (i.e. topic and unity). It should not be a simple collection of unrelated sentences.