In level 3 integrated skills I have encouraged and implemented simple articles for students to use for their essays. Students must mention the article once in their essays. This is an attempt to bridge the gap and help students transition easier into using articles. Directions: Examine multiple articles with students on various topics. Articles can be found on Newsela.com. Have students write down their opinions then share with the class about topic/prompt. Introduce the article. […]
Category: Writing: Intermediate – Advanced
Grammar Game sentences
These are some slides with sentences from high intermediate ESL students’ papers that I use as part of a grammar game. I do it a few times as a semester to review and allow more relaxed practice. I put students in pairs or groups, and usually allow them to use books and notes. The sentence appears on a slide, and then students work together to find and decide how to correct any mistakes. They write […]
Practice Final (High-Int Writing)
This is a Practice Final I’m using in ESL 268/568: High Intermediate Writing. It’s my first semester teaching the class, so I’m not sure how it will go. Most of the semester we’ve been working from Q Skills 3: Reading and Writing, but I wanted to use a reading and prompt more based on composition classes. Laura TalleyESL and English Instructor at Yuba College and Butte College <<https://lctalley.wordpress.com/>>
Composition Self-Assessment
In ESL 282B, Composition I used Longman Academic Writing Series, Paragraphs to Essays by Alice Oshima and Ann Hogue. Pearson, 2014. This Fourth Edition had a new component compared to the Third Edition, 2007. Towards the end of each chapter there is a section entitled Self-Assessment. For example, in Chapter 9 (“Essay Organization”) students are asked to check off if they learned to identify and write the three parts of an essay, etc. This check […]
Genre Based Writing
At the CATESOL conference, there was a new technique for teaching writing that has spread to classrooms. Sometimes I feel like language teaching trends can be a lot like fashion or diet trends. Once one style is popular, just wait a decade until the opposite (bell- bottoms versus skinny jeans or low fat versus Keto) comes into play. Since I started teaching, about a decade ago, I’ve been vigorously implementing techniques for my students to […]
Brainstorming for High Level Writing
This is a power point I use to present different ways to brainstorm. Before the presentation or doing the presentation I give examples of what each brainstorming technique is. The topics are a survey of all the essays this class covers. After this I assign homework for them to practice these techniques and when they return they will have a quiz on this (given around 7 minutes per prompt). Directions: Teach or walk the class […]
Top 3: Revision of Higher Level Writing Idea
I have been teaching writing for a while and at another school where we have department finals. For higher levels instead of giving a ton of comments and feedback, I focus on a Top 3. These are three areas I feel are most important for improvement. Students must improve for their revision and then highlight/bold. After they turn it in, examine and provide additional feedback. If students can focus on certain areas, teachers will see […]
Smart Phones and You – Research Results
This unit/module focuses on the negative effects that smart phones are playing in our life in terms of memory and our attention via an article entitled “How Smartphones Hijack Our Minds,” by Nicholas Carr, October 6, 2017. The article is rather lengthy so best to do this towards the end of the semester than at the beginning. With that in mind, the unit/module focuses on teaching students how to relay research results in a […]
Summary Writing
Summary writing is challenging at best for native speakers let along English language learners who often resort to copying huge amounts of text from the original source feeling they can’t paraphrase due to their lack of vocabulary. Last semester and again now this semester actively, I started a new practice of asking students to focus on using the ten survival words in their summary and limiting the number of sentences they could use. This has […]
ESL 105 Final Exam Scoring Rubric
Currently our highest level ESL class is ESL 105, Pre-Collegiate Composition / Reading. Until recently ESL 105 fell under the umbrella of the WCC English Department. In preparation for the Final Exam students were provided with expectations for grading. A score of 4 was the highest possible. A score of 4 or 3 was passing and a score of 2 or 1 was not passing. At that time English 105 and ESL 105 Final Exams […]