Sophomore ESL Writing, Week 4

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Learn English Writing

This is week 4 of the semester. What did we do recently?

  1. Wrote first draft – an analysis of health and wealth. This included a hypothesis, descriptive of the connection between these two variables, and an evaluation.
  2. Completed second draft of the homeless story
  3. Completed chapter 1 and chapter 2 in the textbook
  4. Weekly fluency activity (e.g. freewriting)

What will we do this week?

  • Start to rewrite beaver/frog summary (ENG 260-04 only)
  • Complete chapter 3 in the textbook
  • Write third draft of homeless story
  • Write second draft of health and wealth
  • Write first draft of book-movie review
  • New editing exercises
  • New text analysis to find elements of cohesion

Next Writing Exercise

Write a Review: Book or Movie

Your task is to write an interesting and informative review about a book of movie.  Your review should have two parts:

  • a summary of the basic story (e.g. characters, plot, setting)
  • your own evaluation of the story (e.g. the ideas, the message)

Please note that the organisation of this task is similar to the other writing exercise you have done so far (i.e. homeless man and health-wealth):

  • use a good hook (opening sentence)
  • tell us what the movie is about
  • use a hypothesis sentence pattern to describe complex ideas
  • put your own ideas into the story (called voice in the writing world)
  • try to connect the conclusion with the opening hook (e.g. similar ideas, words or theme, answer a question)
  • use some of the writing skills we have learned to create cohesion (e.g. synonyms, pronouns, transition words, contrast)

Examples of Opening Sentences

The purpose of the first sentence of a story, essay or review is to stimulate interest, give the reader some useful information and encourage him or her to continue reading. That is easy to say but hard to do.

Let’s look at some opening sentences by a famous American movie reviewer. His name was Robert Ebert. He is quite famous in America for reviewing movies and telling good stories. Here are some of his movie review. We’ll just look at a few of them and focus on the first couple of sentences: