teachingenglish.org What is a teacher and, particularly a teacher of English Language Learner, supposed to do to be effective and maintain his/her sanity? Here are four ways I try to do both: Peer Review There does not seem to be clarity among researchers about the best ways to assist ELLs in revising their writing, but they all seem to agree that one of the best things teachers can do is to give ELLs more time - more time to write, more time to think, more time to revise. Katie Hull and I have written extensively in our books about how we implement a peer review process in our classroom that actually works. One element that article does not include is this Downloadable Peer Review Sheet that we have students use in this process: 1. The first student who is getting their essay reviewed reads the essay aloud and the reviewer follows along on his/her copy. Note that teachers will probably want to modify the Peer Review Sheet to reflect the essay their students are writing. 2. 3. The questions are: Pointing
Teach English Writing: Videos Write Story Summaries Writing Skills: idea, word choice, sentence fluency, conventions, organisation Short videos with interesting plots make great prompts for an ESL writing class. What makes a good video prompt? I look for four features when choosing a video for the writing class. 1 Family friendly content Videos with swearing, nudity, graphic violence, bloody gore or sexual over tones just don’t work in the class, even in university. 2 Short and Sweet Videos that are 2 to 3 minutes work well. 3 Minimal Dialogue Videos with no dialogue work best. 4 Stories with a Message To get the best out of my writing students, I like to offer videos that work on several levels. The Writing Framework With a video prompt, I ask students to complete two main tasks that move up Bloom’s pyramid of cognitive domains. 1 Summarizing the Story Describe the main characters, the setting (time and place) and the plot (the basic story). Students should not describe everything. 2 Evaluate Respond to the story. The Moment
Six Amazing Websites that Make Your Writing Stronger Long writing activities are not very frequently done in class. I tend to think that my students are like me; I need the right kind of atmosphere. Writing requires time, silence and lots of inspiration. Ideally, at this time of the year, I would probably wish to be sitting next to a fireplace with the most perfect instagrammable snow falling outside my window while drinking a nice cup of coffee waiting for inspiration to strike. Unfortunately, there isn’t any snow where I live so I’ll have to make do with a bit of rain and some reddish trees. Note: you won’t find “instagrammable” in the dictionary Inspiration, the most important word when writing and something my students claim to lack. These are some great sites that can help you make your writing stronger. Photo by Tekke 1. Skell is easy to use. 2.Netspeak is a really helpful site to help you write better. You can find the word(s) you’re looking for by typing signs as seen in the picture below. Type ? 3. 4. 5. 6.
Feedback on Written Work | ELT Blog In a standard course the learners receive feedback on their performance in a variety of ways, ranging from oral feedback on a whole class-level, through individualised comments on a one-to-one basis, to lengthy prose on their written work. While it is easy for feedback to backfire in general, it is all too easy for written comments to backfire horrendously or even be completely ignored. Imagine you are a language learner, you get your written work back and it is covered in red marks – every line has at least two errors highlighted. How would you feel? Do the words ‘deflated’ or ‘demotivated’ come quickly to mind? What is the best way to give feedback on written work which is both informative and constructive yet not overwhelming? First of all, try to avoid using red ink when marking work: the colour is all too often associated with failure – think of the red F’s students receive in American TV programmes. Staging is also very important when giving feedback. Like this: Like Loading...
Unit 5: Preparing to write Teachers can help learners get started by doing pre-writing tasks, and give them a structure for writing with writing models and frames. This video shows these approaches in action with a variety of written task types. It demonstrates how to motivate and support students to begin the writing process and how to help them structure and develop meaningful written texts. Parts 1 and 2 show two examples of teachers carry out pre-writing tasks with lower secondary level learners from Turkey and Argentina. Part 3 shows a teacher in the UK carrying out pre-writing tasks with a mixed nationality group of young adults preparing for IELTS exams. Part 4 examines writing models and frames. Procedure: Download the session notes. Video titles: Part 1: Pre-writing tasks Part 2: Pre-writing tasks Part 3: Pre-writing tasks Part 4: Writing models and frames Loading Viddler Videos
How to Improve Writing Skills in 15 Easy Steps Learning a variety of tricks to improve writing skills isn’t as difficult as you may think. We’ve put together a list of steps to help you make dramatic improvements to the quality of your writing in short order. Becoming a better writer takes practice, and you’re already practicing. No, seriously—you write a lot. Even if you don’t think of yourself as a writer, you put thoughts into text more often than you realize. Improve your writing wherever you write. Grammarly can help with that. Get Grammarly So, you’re already writing. Give Your Writing Structure It’s fine to rattle off a stream of consciousness when you’re writing in your journal, but if you actually want to communicate with others you’ll need to bring some order to those rambling thoughts. 1 Make sure you’re clear on the concepts you’re writing about. Albert Einstein said, “If you can’t explain it to a six-year-old, you don’t understand it yourself.” 2 If the message is complex, outline it. 3 Anticipate your readers’ questions.
Visualisering av Nationella proven Writing ENG5, eller, färgkodning av "A Good Life" - Didaktiska laboratoriet Välkomna till Didaktiska Laboratoriet. Detta inlägg ämnar att öka lärares och elevers förståelse för olika språkliga faktorer och hur de bedöms i det skriftliga Nationella provet i engelska 5. För att närma oss detta ämne kommer inlägget att beskriva 1) färgkodning av NAFS bedömda elevexempel, 2) förtydliga bedömningsfaktorer i kursen Engelska 5 och 3) rekommendera strategier för skrivande. Färgkodning av NAFS bedömda elevexempel Inför nationella proven i engelska arbetar vårt ämneslag med att låta elever öva på gamla nationella prov som finns att hitta på (Nationella prov i främmande språk vid Göteborgs universitet). Jag har tidigare i mitt arbete låtit elever i engelska 5 och 6 läsa och bedöma elevexempel från NAFS för att sedan utgå från den tillhörande motiveringen när vi ska hitta en samstämmighet gällande innehållets kvalitet. Bedömningsfaktorerna delas upp i innehåll samt språk- och uttrycksförmåga. Förtydliga bedömningsfaktorer i kursen Engelska 5 Feke
Tone in Writing: Teach Students How to Identify Tone and Use it Effectively in their Own Writing. written by: Trent Lorcher • edited by: SForsyth • updated: 1/17/2012 It has been my observation that students cannot identify tone, identify whether or not their writing reflects tone, or understand the importance of what they are saying and how they are saying it. Let's take care of that problem right now. After teaching students how to write for an audience and with a purpose, how to effectively evaluate point of view, and how to maintain personal voice, I felt good about myself. I called my dad and told him what a smart son he had. Then I realized my students had no idea how to effectively use tone in writing. Lesson Plans: Fine Tune Your Writing Focus Writing that lacks focus confuses readers.
Be a better writer in 15 minutes: 4 TED-Ed lessons on grammar and word choice There’s no denying it — the English language can be mighty tricky. When writing a paper, a novel or even an e-mail, you might look at a sentence you just wrote and think, “Is that comma supposed to be there?” or “Is that really the best word to use?” Fear not! TED-Ed has put together a list of four of our favorite grammar and language lessons to get your next piece of writing in tip-top shape. First, let’s look at the often-confusing comma. What about the Oxford comma? Now, take an adjective such as “implacable” or a verb like “proliferate” or even another noun “crony,” and add a suffix, such as “-ity” or “-tion” or “-ism.” Finally, when it comes to good writing, don’t take the easy route!