In my ESL 282A, Fundamentals of Composition class, I use the Longman Academic Writing Series, Level 2, Paragraphs text by Ann Hogue. This Pearson book at the end of each chapter has a Timed Writing section that helps students get ready for future classes. Since many intend to get into the English Department’s sequence leading to 1A, this is an excellent way to accustom them to the pressures of testing in class. They have 30 […]
Tag: writing
Your Dream Job
Before students can decide on a career of study, it is important to take them through some initial steps to explore their interests and preferred working environments as well as what types of skills they already have and what fields these may be useful. The attached handout is the written segment of this lesson leading to a writing assignment expressing all these preferences in a well-developed paragraph. Being able to state what we want is […]
Writing a Well-Developed Paragraph: Intermediate
This activity takes place after an initial lesson on topic sentences, concluding sentences and supporting details. As a warm-up activity at the start of class, students do a quick interview where they ask three classmates what their special skill is that makes them great to work with (see handout). Divide students into groups of four or five. Once in groups, ask students which person in their group said they were a good leader or always […]
Editing Writing Practice
This writing practice is for high-beginning/low-intermediate (ESL 235- level 3 integrated skills). I used examples from the students own writing (either a recent test or writing homework) that I would type up to use with students’ permission. They were already used to correction symbols (which are introduced at the start of the class with the first homework assignments). I usually go over the first example with the class together, reading sentence by sentence and stopping […]
Beginning Writing Rubric
This is a rubric that I created for my beginning ESL class to use with their writing assignments. In that class, we were practicing writing a paragraph about a picture. Every time we learned new things, I would model how they could use it to expand their paragraphs. I used this rubric to give them feedback so they could see their strengths and areas for improvement. Below the rubric are examples to help explain each […]
BE+ Adjective
This is an activity I created to practice using the BE verb with an adjective. It gets students up and moving and writing. Click here to read how to do this activity and download the handouts. World English Intro: Unit 1 Jessica JohnstonJessica Johnston is the ESL resource faculty at Woodland Community College. Before grad school, she taught EFL in Quito, Ecuador. She loves creating class […]