Most English language learners struggle with writing, and it often goes beyond being unsure about grammar and vocabulary. More importantly, they might be unfamiliar with the structure of a paragraph or an essay. How to Write a Paragraph includes a sample paragraph and tips that will give your students some guidance. But what about actually starting that paragraph or essay? Sometimes getting started is the hardest part! Below are two common techniques that students can easily use to pull readers into their writing and get their pens moving (or their fingers typing).
Start it with a question…
This is a great technique to grab readers’ interest. Have students come up with a question that’s related to their topic. A question like this helps students think about what they want to answer/address in their paragraph/essay, and lets readers know what to expect from the writing.
Common ways to start such a question are:
- Did you know…?
- What would you do if…?
- Can…?
- Do you think…?
Examples:
- Did you know that some fish can fly?
- What would you do if you won the lottery?
- Can you imagine living on the moon?
- Do you think that we waste food in this country?
Start it with a quote…
Quotes are another common way to bring up the topic in general and to pique readers’ interest. Finding a quote would be great to assign for homework the day before a writing task. Students can choose a topic (or have one assigned by the teacher) and come up with one or two quotes that they can use at the beginning of their paragraph/essay. Make sure you teach them to properly reference the quote. The most common style is to use an em dash (—), with no space after it, followed by the author’s name (as with the Anne Frank quote at the beginning of this blog post). Another option is to use a tilde (~).
Good sites to search for quotes by keyword:
- http://www.brainyquote.com
- http://quotes.dictionary.com
- http://www.goodreads.com/quotes
- http://www.quotegarden.com
For practice, find our Music – Writing Activity in the Project Depot – Writing. This section has 18 guided writing tasks on a variety of fun topics that are sure to inspire your students to write!
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