Category Archives: *ESL WRITING

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

• Fluency Writing: Reading, Speaking In Triads, And Listening Culminating In A Writing Task (REVISITED)

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Cover fluency shot

                                          Integrating the four skills

(This posting includes a handout which you are welcome to use with your students.)*

This is the perfect activity for integrating four skills into one activity.  And it culminates in a writing task in which students focus on controlling their grammar and on their sentence style.  It’s also one in which students can practice those two aspects of writing without having to spend time thinking about what to write.

These fluency activities can be used throughout a term when instructors would like to have students work on their grammar in a writing context and/or when they would like to add some group work in their writing classes.  Also, it’s a good lead-in to teaching paraphrasing skills.

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• Fun Writing-Class Activity: Writing Hints and Solving Mysteries about Classmates

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REV Cover neighbor shot
(This posting includes a handout which you are welcome to use with your students.)*

This posting is an updated version of a post from April 10, 2018:  • Writing Class Person Description Activity: Fun, Lively and Productive

I knew that this activity worked well with my ESL students. However, I hadn’t realized what they were experiencing internally until I did it myself.

Several of my colleagues and I decided to try out some activities by putting ourselves in the roles of students. And this was one of them.

In brief, we were randomly and secretly assigned one of the colleagues in the room. On a paper with only a number, we described the colleague physically and/or their personality and/or habit etc. Next we put all our papers on a stack, mixed them up and then each of us taped one on the wall. After that, we walked around reading the description and writing on a paper the name of the colleague being described. Finally, we shared our decisions with each other.

My insights into what students experience during this activity

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• High Early Grades in a Course: Motivating or Dangerous

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Low grades Cover shot

At the end of the term, the Level 3 Writing teacher Pam (not her real name), was filled with turmoil. She had shared samples of her students’ papers with our Writing Panel (a group of five Writing teachers.) After reading the papers, the members felt that four of her students’ writing skills hadn’t developed enough to pass to the next level. Thus, the members recommended that those four repeat Level 3.

Pam acknowledged that the students’ skills were weak and said that two of them were expecting to fail. However, the other two would feel shocked.

At the beginning of the term in September, Pam liked to give students high grades on assignments. She was worried that low grades would discourage them. As the term progressed, she continued to score high those students who made a good effort, thinking that would keep them motivated. But now it was December, and she was caught in a dilemma: either pass those two students who would struggle greatly in the next level or shock and disillusion them with the news that they had failed.

In his book, Punished by Rewards, Alfie Kohn, discusses meaningful perspectives about and approaches to giving grades. By incorporating many of her ideas, we can avoid the pitfall that this Writing teacher had fallen into.

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• Introducing any ESL Lesson: FIVE Effective Ways

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COVER Intros

I need to start by making a confession. After I had been teaching ESL for about 10 years, I suddenly realized that I had become a bit careless about something important.

Here is what happened. As I mentioned, I was in my 10th year of teaching ESL, and I was asked to teach a course to American university students who wanted to become ESL teachers. One day, I planned to demonstrate a lesson. The first thing I decided that I need to tell them is that it’s really important to have a good introduction to the lesson. You don’t just want to tell students, open your books to page 23. Your assignment is to do Ex 4 and 5.

Slide 1

But wait! That is exactly how I had been starting my ESL classes recently. I realized that in my effort to get the lesson started, I had stopped doing a very important first step. And as a result, I missed an opportunity to stimulate and motivate my student.

So as I prepared to show my teacher-training students ways that they could introduce lessons, I returned to my days as a beginning teacher and started to use them once again with my ESL students. And I have to tell you, the results were amazing. I could see it in my students’ faces how much more energized and eager they were to do the activities. And I felt not only excited about teaching them but also confident in the importance of the activities they were about to do.

Perhaps the greatest motivator for students is feeling like they are working toward something worthwhile and are doing something important. We can satisfy this need in students by explaining the reason for the assignment.

So here are four great techniques that you can use to introduce your lessons.

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