learn English writing

ESL Writing Lesson: Summarizing Data

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This ESL writing lesson gives students a chance to practice an important writing skill: how to read data and summarize the main points into one or two paragraphs. First, here is a quick review of some great student writing.

ESL Student Writing

  1. The Smart phone makes people free from time and space.
  2. All people are addicted to Smart phones.
  3. The invention of the Internet has changed our life completely.
  4. Imagine the world without the Internet.
  5. If there is no eraser in the world, our life would be difficult.

A Few Comments

  1. What is difference between convenient and comfortable?

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ESL Writing: A Simple Scoring Rubric

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Anyone who teaches ESL writing knows there comes a time when student papers pile up on the desk and they have to be marked. The hard part, when faced with 30 or more regular submissions, is finding a way to give English writing students meaningful input without spending hours generating feedback.

A writing rubric is one possible solution.

Below is a suggested scoring guide. It is simple, yes. Though I hope it provides useful guidance.

This rubric is suitable for one paragraph

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Summary Writing Lesson: NPR Sleep Lesson 2

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The previous post introduced the idea of summary writing. It showed students how to structure a summary paragraph using a process I call FACT. The challenge for students was to listen to an NPR podcast and write a one paragraph summary.

Sample Summary Paragraph

Here is a sample which can help English students understand the structure of a summary paragraph.

In this podcast, scientists asked a question: can people

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