Category Archives: 06 ❖ ESL WRITING

These postings include writing activities, teaching techniques and strategies for evaluating writing skills.

• An Effective Technique for Analyzing Students’ Grammar Skills in a Writing Context

Cover counting subordinators

Here is typical exchange that I’ve often heard between teachers who were evaluating a student’s writing together.

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It’s relatively easy to evaluate the content in students’ writing. We can usually agree about how well it is organized, how clear the ideas are presented and how deep the support is. The challenge comes when trying to gage the students’ level of grammar in a writing context. It involves more than just counting grammar mistakes. We need to consider a couple of aspects, and one of them is the seriousness of the errors. For example, look at these two sentences:

(Student A) One day, a young bride ¹ name Jane packed her stuff and tried to leave her hotel.

(Student B) One day, a young bride packed her stuff, ¹ she tried to leave her hotel.

They both have one error, but it would be a mistake to assume that they are at the same level. Student A’s mistake could easily be just an editing error. On the other hand, Student B’s is a run-on and could indicate that the student is still struggling with sentence boundaries.

When analyzing grammar mistakes, we also need to consider the complexity of the students’ sentence style.

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• Writing Your Own ESL Exercises: Two Basic Recommendations

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Blog cover Write Own

When I first started to write my own exercises, I learned two simple but important steps the hard way. In this short, 5-minute video, I describe what happened when I did NOT include the two steps in a couple of exercise and how I was able to improve them.

Also, see • Recommended Treasure Chest for Writing Your Own ESL Materials

Here is the link to the video:

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• “Read-Aloud” Method for Collaborating with Colleagues to Assess ESL Students’ Writing Level

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Traditionally, when evaluating students’ writing levels, the “evaluators” silently read the essays in their offices, oftentimes fill out a rubric and come up with a score. Most of us would agree that such a process is onerous and often results in students being misplaced.

The method that I’ll describe here has important benefits for teachers and the ESL program as a whole. I’ve used this in several ESL programs for two situations: (1) determining which students should be promoted to the next level at the end of a term, and (2) placement of new students. It’s especially helpful for determining the proper Writing-class level of borderline students, in other words, ones whose writing levels are not obvious.

To demonstrate how the method works, let’s look at those two situations.

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• Easy Editing-Awareness Technique for ESL Students

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This can drive a teacher crazy. You remind students to proof-read their paper before turning them in. However, after class, as you read them, you continually see basic grammar mistakes that you are sure they should have been able to have caught.

It’s quite common for ESL students to have a distorted view of their writing skills. They think that they can adequately edit their papers as they are writing, and thus, feel little need to re-read them before turning them in. Little do they realize that a plethora of simple grammar and spelling mistakes on a paper can give the reader/teacher a lower opinion of the students’ skills.

I have found that the following little requirement has greatly transformed students into much more diligent self-editors.

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Common Sense Teaching ESL

English as a Second Language Teaching Techniques and Perspectives

Category Archives: 06 ❖ ESL WRITING

• An Effective Technique for Analyzing Students’ Grammar Skills in a Writing Context

When analyzing grammar mistakes, we also need to consider the complexity of the students’ sentence style.

• Writing Your Own ESL Exercises: Two Basic Recommendations

Here is the link to the video:

• “Read-Aloud” Method for Collaborating with Colleagues to Assess ESL Students’ Writing Level

To demonstrate how the method works, let’s look at those two situations.

• Easy Editing-Awareness Technique for ESL Students

I have found that the following little requirement has greatly transformed students into much more diligent self-editors.

When analyzing grammar mistakes, we also need to consider the complexity of the students’ sentence style.

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Here is the link to the video:

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To demonstrate how the method works, let’s look at those two situations.

Share this:

I have found that the following little requirement has greatly transformed students into much more diligent self-editors.

Share this: